Compilation of the best proverbs from around the world — ancient and modern — offers concise, time-honored wisdom about love, money, politics, and human nature. Handsome gift-book format makes this volume an ideal present.

The Routledge Book of World Proverbs draws together proverbs that transcend culture, time and space to provide an enduring collection that is both useful and enjoyable.

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Lost in Translation and Eating the Sun, a charming illustrated collection of more than fifty expressions from around the globe that explores the nuances of language From the hilarious and romantic to the philosophical and literal, the idioms, proverbs, and adages in this illustrated collection address the nuances of language in the form of sayings from around the world. From the French idiom “to pedal in the sauerkraut” (meaning, “to spin your wheels”), to the Japanese idiom “even monkeys fall from trees” (meaning, “even experts can be wrong”), The Illustrated Book of Sayings reveals the remarkable diversity, humor, and poignancy of the world’s languages and cultures.

A charming collection of over 1,000 of the most memorable, amusing, and useful proverbs spanning cultures, centuries, and topics. Each saying is identified by country or culture, making this book an invaluable reference tool as well as an entertaining anthology of wit and wisdom collected from all over the globe.

In dire need of a stout dose of sound advice? Shake the doldrums and get back on track by dipping into W. A. Clouston's fascinating Book of Wise Sayings. Bringing together bon mots and aphorisms from around the world, this volume can soothe the soul in troubled times or provide philosophical fodder for a lively discussion.