John Updike, página 4 de 10

En los años sesenta, un Harry "Conejo" Angstrom ya maduro siente de pronto que se tambalean las frágiles bases sobre las que el cree haber asentado sus escasas convicciones tras sus primeras correrías. Conejo intenta entonces acercarse a un grupo de jovenes intransigentes e inconformistas, mas o menos comprometidos en la lucha por cambiar las instituciones que rigen la sociedad en que viven, pero sus ideas y sus argumentos, si bien parecen cargados de razon, no consiguen ofrecerle la salida y la esperanza que el necesita para paliar su desconcierto. Mas bien, poco a poco, va descubriendo que su intento por comprender a esos jovenes fracasa porque ellos mismos viven en la incertidumbre de un mundo que condenan, pero que ignoran por que otro orden de cosas sustituir. Su propio drama es el de toda una generacion que trata desesperadamente de hallar en vano un nuevo codigo de conducta.

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all.

Charles Lindsay's photographs offer a humorous and inquisitive foray into the hazards of lost golf balls - rough, woods, bunkers and wetlands - as well as unexpected encounters with wildlife on and off the green. An avid golfer, he photographs his way to the heart of the matter with a light touch and an eye for telling details. In the process he discovers balls ravaged by golfers, 'gators and foxes. Lindsay even comes face to face with what is believed to be the world's oldest golf ball - unearthed in a cellar in the Netherlands alongside a primitive club - and the infamous spot in the tall grass where Tiger Woods lost a ball that cost him the British Open. There are photographs from golf courses all over the world. The Foreword by John Updike is a celebration of golf and nature and why the two are not always compatible. A humorous anecdote by Greg Norman and quotes from other well-known golfers and celebrities also appear throughout the book.

Ben Turnbull is a 66 year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of the year, retains much of its accustomed comforts.

In a moment of sudden inspiration Sarah Worth - S - has walked out on her husband to join the Ashram Arhat. Famous for his transcendent wisdom and divine immobility, the Arhat has transferred his ahram from India to Arizona, where he and his enthusiastic entourage are attempting to make the desert fruitful.

It's 1989, and Harry Rabbit Angstrom is far from restful. Fifty-six and overweight, he has a struggling business on his hands and a heart that is starting to fail. His family, too, is giving him cause for concern. His son, Nelson, is a wreck of a man, a cocaine addict with shattered self-respect. Janice, his wife, has decided that she wants to be a working girl. And as for Pru, his daughter-in-law, she seems to be sending out signals to Rabbit that he knows he should ignore, but somehow can't. He has to make the most of life. After all, he doesn't have much time left.

Henry Bech, the celebrated author of Travel Light, has been scrutinized, canonized and vilified by critics and readers across the world. Here, the experiences of this bemused literary icon, one of Updike's greatest creations, are described in hilarious detail, as he travels the world struggling to break his writer's block; returns to his native America to find new success with Think Big, his all-time blockbuster; and visits communist Czechoslovakia, where he is greeted by a dizzyingly adoring public. Brilliantly comic and deeply poignant, The Complete Henry Bech is one of the greatest of all explorations of the writing life and of what happens when a writer becomes a literary celebrity.

Middle-aged, brilliant and bored, Roger Lambert is a professor of Divinity at a New England university. Firmly convinced that religious belief can only be justified by recourse to pure faith, he is dismissive when visited by a gangling student who claims, with evangelical zeal, that computer technology is on the brink of proving the existence of God. But when his unhappy wife flings herself into an affair with the younger man, and Roger's faith in his own placid life is thrown into question. With his marriage close to collapse, he finds himself increasingly drawn to his own half-niece, the nineteen-year-old Verna, in this cunning and comic exploration of religion, uncertainty and passion.

En Tarbox, una apartada y pequeña comunicad de Nueva Inglaterra, todo parece transcurrir en armonía en un grupo de parejas que practican entre sí intercambios sexuales. Pero algo empieza a distorsinarse con la llegada de un joven matrimonio, y la desconfianza, la insidia, las intrigas y... ¿Como no?, los celos.

It's 1969, and the times are changing. America is about to land a man on the moon, the Vietnamese war is in full swing, and racial tension is on the rise. Things just aren't as simple as they used to be - at least, not for Rabbit Angstrom. His wife has left him with his teenage son, his job is under threat and his mother is dying. Suddenly, into his confused life - and home - comes Jill, an eighteen-year-old runaway who becomes his lover. But when she invites her friend to stay, a young black radical named Skeeter, the pair's fragile harmony soon begins to fail.

Harry Rabbit' Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six, he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with an alcoholic wife and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he flees from his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life.

At the Diamond County Home for the Aged, the inmates prepare for the annual ritual of the Poorhouse Fair, a summer celebration at which the old and infirm sell their produce on stalls to the people of the local town. Bitter, resentful and edging towards senility, the elderly residents of the Home take pride every year in the responsibility and self-respect they gain from this one day. But when the fair goes less well than the old folks had hoped, they are in no doubt who to blame: Conner, the new prefect of the home. Together, they begin to revolt against the younger man, and reassert their own independence.

It's 1979 and Rabbit is no longer running. He's walking, and beginning to get out of breath. That's ok, though - it gives him the chance to enjoy the wealth that comes with middle age. It's all in place: he's Chief Sales Representative and co-owner of Springer motors; his wife, at home or in the club, is keeping trim; he wears good suits, and the cash is pouring in. So why is it that he finds it so hard to accept the way that things have turned out? And why, when he looks at his family, is he haunted by regrets about all those lives he'll never live?

Nothing in his previous life could have prepared Colonel Hakim Felix Ellellou for his new role as the President of Kush. Neither the French army nor his American university provided a grounding in the subtle skills of revolutionary dictatorship. Still less did they expect him to acquire four wives!