From the bestelling author of Romeo and/or Juliet and How to Invent Everything, the greatest work in English literature, now in the greatest format of English literature: a chooseable-path adventure! When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he gave the world just one possible storyline, drawn from a constellation of billions of alternate narratives. And now you can correct that horrible mistake! Play as Hamlet and avenge your father's death—with ruthless efficiency this time. Play as Ophelia and change the world with your scientific brilliance. Play as Hamlet's father and die on the first page, then investigate your own murder… as a ghost! Featuring over 100 different endings, each illustrated by today's greatest artists, incredible side quests, fun puzzles, and a book-within-a-book instead of a play-within-a-play, To Be or Not To Be offers up new surprises and secrets every time you read it. You decide this all sounds extremely excellent, and that you will definitely purchase this book right away. Because as the Bard said: “to be or not to be… that is the adventure.” ...You're almost certain that's how it goes. To Be or Not To Be originally launched as a record-breaking Kickstarter project. This new, reader-friendly edition features the same text and illustrations as the original version, redesigned to take up half as many pages and weigh a whole pound less.

The essential guide to Shakespeare and his work, celebrating 400 years of his legacy.

The first book of its kind, . . . Or Not to Be offers rare insights into the lives--and deaths--of such luminaries as Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Diane Arbus, Jim Jones, Anne Sexton, Hermann Goering, Kurt Cobain, and Yukio Mishima, via their last letters and suicide notes.

To be or not to be is an analysis of linguistic, cultural, political, economic and social factors, which explain the intricate root causes of conflicts which have ravished Sudan. It stands in stark contrast to the dominant simplification and distortions which have come to typify presentations of the region. Central to the book is an unapologetic explanation of Arabization; which often is portrayed as individual choices of religious loyalty, but, in fact, masks an intentional power-system which viciously corrupts Afrikan identities. By highlighting the detrimental complexities of manipulation, geopolitics, identity confusion and cultural imperialism, Hashim has not only written an authoritative book about Sudan, but also presented a comprehensive case study that all of Afrika must learn from. Rarely are we presented with such a vigourous inside-view to an area of Afrika which once was held in the highest civilizational esteem, but has been reduced to an ideological field of Arab-led terror, massacres and disintegration.

Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy is quoted more often than any other passage in Shakespeare. It is arguably the most famous speech in the Western world - though few of us can remember much about it. This book carefully unpacks the individual words, phrases and sentences of Hamlet's soliloquy in order to reveal how and why it has achieved its remarkable hold on our culture. Hamlet's speech asks us to ask some of the most serious questions there are regarding knowledge and existence. In it, Shakespeare also expands the limits of the English language. Douglas Bruster therefore reads Hamlet's famous speech in "slow motion" to highlight its material, philosophical and cultural meaning and its resonance for generations of actors, playgoers and readers.

Building on current scholarly interest in the religious dimensions of the play, this study shows how Shakespeare uses Hamlet to comment on the Calvinistic Protestantism predominant around 1600. By considering the play's inner workings against the religious ideas of its time, John Curran explores how Shakespeare portrays in this work a completely deterministic universe in the Calvinist mode, and, Curran argues, exposes the disturbing aspects of Calvinism. By rendering a Catholic Prince Hamlet caught in a Protestant world which consistently denies him his aspirations for a noble life, Shakespeare is able in this play, his most theologically engaged, to delineate the differences between the two belief systems, but also to demonstrate the consequences of replacing the old religion so completely with the new.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “suspenseful, dazzlingly clever and gravely profound” (The Washington Post) novel that brilliantly recasts Shakespeare and lends new weight to the age-old question of Hamlet's hesitation, from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement. Trudy has been unfaithful to her husband, John. What’s more, she has kicked him out of their marital home, a valuable old London town house, and in his place is his own brother, the profoundly banal Claude. The illicit couple have hatched a scheme to rid themselves of her inconvenient husband forever. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb. As Trudy’s unborn son listens, bound within her body, to his mother and his uncle’s murderous plans, he gives us a truly new perspective on our world, seen from the confines of his. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, coming in September!

In 'To Be or Not to Be' (1942), Ernest Lubitsch brought his legendary comic touch to the most unpromising situation: life in Nazi-occupied Poland. In this study, Peter Barnes considers what it is to make comedy out of tragedy.