Penguin Classics

A singular journey through the visionary world of Kafka and its captivating mysteries, now in Penguin Modern Classics. What are Kafka's stories about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols? Things that happen every day? But where and when? In this remarkable book, Roberto Calasso sets out not to dispel the mystery but to let it be illuminated by its own light....

A remarkable collection of dark, funny and haunting short stories from the inimitable author of The Lottery. An anxious devil, a malicious old woman, and a mid-century Jack the Ripper; a pursuit through a nightmarish city, a small boy's thrilling train ride with a female thief, and a town where the possibility of evil lurks behind perfect rose bushes. This...

A jazz novel, a sermon and a song of praise to the richness of African-American experience. From Ralph Ellison, author of the classic novel, Invisible Man - the long-awaited follow-up. Here is the master of American vernacular - the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech - at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of...

Set in the First World War, Journey's End concerns a group of British officers on the front line and opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new eighteen-year-old officer fresh out of English public school, joins the besieged company of his friend and cricketing hero Stanhope, and finds him dramatically changed... Laurence Olivier starred as Stanhope...

The great writer's brilliant, blistering essay collection, chronicling how America—so great, so accomplished, so magical—began destroying its soul. "Sentence by sentence, page by page, Bellow is simply the best writer we have." - The New York Times Book Review In It All Adds Up, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow takes readers on a brilliantly insightful journey through literary...

A collection of folktales to transport the reader into a world of adventurers, tricksters, kings, peasants, and saints. Meticulously selected and artfully recreated, the selection of stories in Italian Folktales is vast and ranges geographically from Corsica and Sicily to Venice and the Alps. Calvino is himself clearly captivated by the folkloric imagination and communicates this in what is a...

June 1940 was the summer of defeat for the French soldiers, deserted by their officers, utterly demoralised, awaiting the Armistice. Day by day, hour by hour, Iron in the Soul unfolds what men thought and felt and did as France fell. Men who shrugged, men who ran, men who fought and tragic men like Mathieu, who had dedicated his life...

Illuminating reflections on painting and drawing from the great 'art-historical odd man out' Thank God for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light How does a painter see the world? Philip Guston, one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century, spoke about art with unparalleled candour and commitment. Touching on work from across his career as...

An indispensable addition to the canon of Burroughs's works, this series of short stories and sketches guides the reader through his literary evolution. Interzone portrays the development of Burroughs's mature writing style by presenting a selection of pieces from the mid-1950s. His outrageous tone of voice represents the exorcism of four decades of oppressive sexual and social conditioning. Burroughs's close...

Illness as Metaphor is an examination of the fantasies concocted around conditions such as cancer and tuberculosis in our cultural history. Susan Sontag argues that illness is not a metaphor and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is to resist such thinking. Her examples of metaphors and images of illness are taken from...

Primo Levi was among the greatest witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive and to sabotage the...

The unnamed spy of The IPCRESS File uncovers a secret buried deep in a Nazi U-Boat. A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War—until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS File,...

Herzog is alone, now that Madeleine has left him for his best friend. Solitary, in a crumbling house which he shares with rats, he is buffeted by a whirlwind of mental activity. People rumoured that his mind had collapsed. But was it true? Locked for days in the custody of his rambling memories, Herzog scrawls frantic letters which he never...

Great Expectations by Kathy Acker features Pip switching identities, sexes, and centuries in a brilliant experimental explosion of literature, sex, and art. New York City is very peaceful and quiet, and the pale grey mists are slowly rising, to show me the world. Pip switches identities, sexes, and centuries in this punk, fairytale reimagining of Charles Dickens's original Great Expectations....

A brilliant feminist novel from Weimar Germany, from the author of Child of All Nations. Gilgi, One of Us introduces us to Gilgi, a young woman who knows where she's going in life—she's ambitious, determined, and fearless. She's not even derailed when her parents drop a massive bombshell on her twenty-first birthday. But then she meets the charming but aimless...

Funeral in Berlin is a vintage spy thriller and part of The IPCRESS File series, where a Russian scientist defects to the West. The setting is the dark and dangerous Berlin of 1963. The anonymous hero of The IPCRESS File is tasked with arranging the defection of a leading Soviet scientist, orchestrated through an elaborate mock coffin. However, he quickly...

A myth-busting, page-turning history of the Battle of Britain History is swamped by patriotic myths about the aerial combat fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over the summer of 1940. In his gripping history of the Battle of Britain, Len Deighton drew on a decade of research and his own wartime experiences to puncture these myths and point towards...

'A stunningly inventive fantasy about cosmic travel' - The New York Times 'There were two kinds of landscape characteristic of the inner planets of the Sun- the purposeful and the desolate.' The planet Quinta is pocked with ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network draped from spindly poles. It is a kingdom of phantoms and of a beauty afflicted...

Newly translated by Michael Hofmann, this is the funny and touching final novel from the author of Child of All Nations. Bombed-out Cologne after the war is a strange place to be. The black market in jam and corsets is booming, half-destroyed houses offer opportunities for stealing doors and eggcups, and de-Nazification parties are all the rage. Recently released from...

First new translation since publication of Albert Camus's story collection. The stories of Exile and the Kingdom explore the dilemma of being an outsider—even in one's own country—and of allegiance. With intense power and lyricism, Camus evokes beautiful but harsh landscapes, whether the shimmering deserts of his native Algeria or the wild, mysterious jungles of Brazil. Here a Frenchwoman is...

From the author of Cider With Rosie, this is a moving, lyrical portrait of the landscape of Laurie Lee's world. 'Living in our valley was like broad beans in a pod, so snug and enclosed and protective.' Laurie Lee walked out of his childhood village one summer morning to travel the world, but he was always drawn back to his...

Evelyn Waugh's hilarious debut novel, with an introduction by Barbara Cooke. Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather embarks on a series of bizarre adventures that start in a minor public school and end in one of HM prisons. In this, his first and funniest novel, Evelyn Waugh immediately caught the ear of the public with his account...

A new selection of stories featuring the celebrated literary detective, Inspector Maigret. An ageing boxer caught in a love triangle. A wealthy Parisian family on the brink of collapse. A mysterious murder in a hotel in Cannes. These tales of human frailty and deceit—three of which are being published in English for the first time—distil the atmosphere, themes and psychological...

Death Comes for the Archbishop is Cather's masterpiece of life, death, and faith in New Mexico, now part of the Modern Classics collection. Two French priests, friends since childhood, are sent to the newly created diocese of New Mexico. Life there is hard and frequently dangerous. Journeys between parishes are beset by the perils of bandits and storms. The people...

New to PMC Expecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Dangling Man is his journal, a wonderful account of his restless wanderings through Chicago's streets, his musings on the...

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angle of Repose A novel of the friendships and woes of two couples, which tells the story of their lives in lyrical, evocative prose by one of the finest American writers of the late 20th century. When two young couples meet for the first time during the Great Depression, they quickly find they have...

He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition. - Will Self A preacher called Deke O'Malley's been selling false hope — the promise of a glorious new life in Africa for just $1,000 a family. But when thieves with machine guns steal the proceeds — and send one man to...

A collection that includes some of Camus' most brilliant political writing. This volume contains some of Camus' most powerful political writing as he reflects on moral responsibility and the role of the artist in the world. Letters to a German Friend was Camus' first wartime intervention, written in 1943 in order 'to make our battle more effective'. Reflections on the...

Years in insurance and marriage to the joyless Hilda have been no more than death in life to George Bowling. This and fear of another war take his mind back to the peace of his childhood in a small country town. But his return journey to Lower Binfield brings complete disillusionment. In Coming Up for Air, George Orwell keenly explores...

A landmark collection of verse from one of the twentieth century's supreme writers. These masterly poems span the decades of Nabokov's career, from Music, written in 1914, to the short, playful To Vera, composed in 1974. The University Poem, one of Nabokov's major poetic works, is here in English for the first time. This extraordinary autobiographical poem looks back at...

The complete collection of Kingsley Amis's poems, as witty, scabrous and bracing as his celebrated novels. Although best known for his comic novels, Kingsley Amis wrote poetry throughout his career. Collected Poems spans subjects from nature and cricket to love, ageing and literature, brimming with his characteristic wit and irreverence, yet full of compassion. 'The Last War' brings home the...

A classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism from one of the best Czech writers. For gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front;...

The race is on to find a German agent, hiding somewhere in the maze of wartime Cairo. January 1942. Rommel's seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt – perhaps soon to threaten Cairo itself. And Rommel has a spy in the city – a source so well-informed that the German commander knows in advance every movement of...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, to tie in with the release of the Steven Spielberg film, and with a new introduction by Brian Aldiss. Matthew's parents are worried. At eleven, he's much too old to have an imaginary friend, yet they find him talking to and arguing with a presence that even he admits is not physically there. This presence...

The dreamlike story of a single mother and her estranged 11-year-old daughter by Yuko Tsushima, the 'archaeologist of the female psyche'. Child of Fortune is deceptively gentle and dreamlike, teetering on the edge of tragedy. It covers a year in the life of a single mother with an eleven-year-old daughter, combining a complex interior world with memorably visual imagery. The...

A stunning new series look for one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in Penguin Modern Classics. In the din and stink that is Cannery Row, a colourful blend of misfits—gamblers, whores, drunks, bums, and artists—survive side by side in a jumble of adventure and mischief. Lee Chong, the astute owner of the well-stocked grocery store, is also...

A masterpiece of American literature, Call It Sleep is a glorious ode to the migrant experience. David Schearl arrives in America in his mother's arms. Waiting for them is a father and husband consumed by frustration and a labyrinth of language and asphalt - New York City at the turn of the century. As David navigates his father's anger and...

The captivating autobiography by one of America's most influential folk singers, Woody Guthrie. Bound for Glory is the funny, cynical and earthy autobiography of Woody Guthrie, the father of American folk music. He tells of his childhood running wild in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, the tragedies that struck his family, and of his life on the open road during the...

A magisterial history of the Second World War by best-selling novelist and former RAF pilot Len Deighton. This unflinching history of the darkest days of the Second World War covers the entire world stage, from the Battle of the Atlantic to Pearl Harbor. Rooted in the personal accounts of the soldiers themselves, Blood, Tears and Folly is a sweeping, moving...

A riveting history of the Nazi conquest of Western Europe This is the story of the Nazi conquest of western Europe, from Hitler's rise to power and 'lightning-fast war', to his fatal mistake in halting the German advance on Dunkirk in 1940. Drawing on technical mastery and interviews with both Allied and German participants, Blitzkrieg sets out the technical thinking...

A foundational work of Black Radical critical theory, now to be widely available here for the first time. Any struggle must be fought on a people's own terms, argues Cedric Robinson's landmark account of Black radicalism. Marxism is a Western construction, and therefore inadequate to describe the significance of Black communities as agents of change against 'racial capitalism'. Tracing the...

From the American master of historical fiction, an award-winning coming-of-age story set amidst the gangster underworld of Depression-era New York City. It's 1930s New York and Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old high-school dropout, has captured the attention of the infamous gangster Dutch Schultz. The product of an East Bronx upbringing by a dysfunctional Catholic mother and an absent Jewish father, Billy...

One of the first bestsellers in Germany after the Second World War, Berlin Finale is a breathtaking novel of the most dramatic period of upheaval in modern history. April 1945, the last days of the Nazi regime. While bombs are falling on Berlin, the Gestapo are still searching for traitors, resistance fighters, and deserters. People mistrust each other more than...

Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb translation by Michael Hofmann. The subject of this book is the life of the former cement-worker and haulier Franz Biberkopf in Berlin. As our story begins, he has just been released from prison, where he did time for some stupid stuff, and now he is back in...

A widely revered collection from the Nobel prize-winning poet, publishing in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time. This startlingly original reworking of the Persephone myth takes us to the icy shores of Averno, the crater lake regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. Here, the consolations of rebirth and renewal are eclipsed by the immediacy...

The incredible memoir of Elaine Brown - the first female leader of the Black Panthers. "I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, Comrade?" So said Elaine Brown on becoming the first female leader of the Black Panther Party in 1974. By that time, the group had...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century examines the meaning of the asylum, the 'total institution'. Asylums presents four interlinked essays that explore life in the 'total institutions'—the closed systems of prisons, boarding schools, nursing homes and, most importantly, mental institutions. Focusing on the relationship between an inmate and the institution...

Le Carré exposes the ugly face of international relations in this spy thriller, new to Penguin Modern Classics. West Germany, a simmering cauldron of radical protests, has produced a new danger to Britain—Karfeld, the menacing leader of the opposition. At the same time, Leo Harting, a Second Secretary in the British Embassy, has gone missing—along with more than forty Confidential...

Witty and nihilistic essays from one of Central Europe's most remarkable philosophers. A Short History of Decay (1949) is E. M. Cioran's nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilisation in mid 20th-century Europe. Touching upon man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks, and the melancholy baseness of all...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, as part of our Achebe relaunch. Ezeulu, headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. But he is beginning to find his authority increasingly under threat—from his rivals in the tribe, from those in the white government, and even from his own family. Yet he still feels he...

'The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler' — Sunday Times Jackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money—a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle. The...

An unnamed spy is entangled in Paris's seedy underworld in a rollercoaster Cold War thriller. An Expensive Place to Die transports readers to Paris in the 1960s, a city that caters to every taste, especially at the private 'clinic' run by the enigmatic Monsieur Datt on Avenue Foch. This clinic supplies psychedelic drugs and sexual favours to the city's elite,...

One of the best American novels ever written - a rollicking, controversial New York fable. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal...

A Murder of Quality is Le Carré's ingenious mystery, featuring his most famous recurring character, George Smiley. Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School—firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service...

A novel of tremendous political relevance, A Most Wanted Man was adapted into a critically-acclaimed film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and is new to Penguin Modern Classics. A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He...

A gritty, hilarious detective novel from Harlem's master crime writer. A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma—and...

A gem of a book about the aggravations and great joys of cats from a literary master. In the autumn of 1965, flush with the unexpected success of his first published books, the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal bought a weekend cottage in Kersko, about an hour's drive east of Prague. From then until his death in 1997, he divided his...

A new selection of foundational works from the influential philosopher who developed the theory of mimetic desire. René Girard eludes easy categories, bridging the fields of literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, history, religion, and theology. Influencing such writers as J. M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera, his insight into contagious violence looks ever more prophetic and relevant seven years after his death....

A high-octane story from the great Eric Ambler, of a journalist on the run in the south of France. Lucia Bernardi was last seen driving a car at top speed away from a villa—and the body of her murdered Iraqi lover—in Switzerland. Now, disgraced journalist Piet Maas has been sent to find her in the south of France. When he...

Runciman's great Crusades trilogy reissued in Penguin Modern Classics 'The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and delusion' The triumph of the First Crusade transformed the eastern Mediterranean, creating a series of European-ruled states along the coast and in Armenia. But the region's Muslim rulers were far from defeated, and the major cities of...

A brilliant hybrid of myth, history and fantasy from Sylvia Townsend Warner, one of the twentieth century's great novelists. Don Juan, that notorious libertine, has disappeared. Has he been dragged down to hell by demons, as rumoured - or has he escaped? Dona Ana, the woman he tried to seduce, will stop at nothing to discover the truth. Set in...

The Essential Works of Michel Foucault offer the definitive collection of Foucault's articles, interviews, and seminars. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology provides a focused study on the philosophy, literature, and art that informed Foucault's engagement with ethics and power. This volume includes brilliant commentaries on the works of de Sade, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Wagner.

Nabokov's other great love story, following an extraordinary relationship across decades and continents. Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, Ada or Ardor is a romance that follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van Veen on his uncle's country estate, in a 'dream-bright' America, through eighty years of rapture, as they cross continents, are continually parted and reunited....

A new translation of this novel set in a tranquil town on the Dutch coast, part of the Maigret series. A Crime in Holland presents a scene reminiscent of a picture-book town, with everything in its place, like ornaments on the mantlepiece of a careful housewife. 'Just take a look,' Duclos said in an undertone, pointing to the scene all...

Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy...

Truman Capote began writing when he was eight and became one of America's most versatile and gifted authors. A Capote Reader contains much of his published work: his fiction, including "Breakfast at Tiffany's", as well as his prolific output of short stories. Also included are travel sketches in which he evokes places from Tangiers to Brooklyn, and portraits of his...

The story of two friends whose dubious relationship spans West Berlin in the 1960s through the Cold War to the age of present-day terrorism is new to Penguin Modern Classics. The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, a British soldier's son born in 1947 in a newly independent Pakistan, and Sasha, the refugee son of an East German Lutheran...

Part novel, part Pop artwork, a is an electrifying slice of Factory life. A knowing response to James Joyce's Ulysses, a gives us twenty-four hours in the life of Ondine, an actor and Warhol superstar. The book is transcribed from tapes between Warhol and Ondine, reproduced exactly as-is. As in his visual art, Warhol has used spontaneous performance and an...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. The Suffragettes Once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Lady Susan unfolds with the line, "Of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a Man of his age! - just old enough to be formal, ungovernable and to have the Gout - too old to be agreeable, and too...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 And when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars.

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. A Terrible Beauty Is Born features the powerful lines: 'But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet...' By turns joyful and despairing, this collection presents some of the twentieth century's greatest verse,...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics – irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Recently widowed, the unscrupulous and beautiful Lady Susan Vernon is determined to scheme her way through high society in the hope of a profitable new match – all while trying to marry off her unfortunate...

Sagan's stylish, shimmering and amoral tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera. Published when she was only eighteen, Françoise Sagan's astonishing first novel Bonjour Tristesse became an instant bestseller. It tells the story of Cecile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A vivacious woman and a high-spirited man both claim that they are determined never to marry. But when their friends trick them into believing that each harbours secret feelings for the other, they begin to question whether their witty banter and sharp-tongued repartee...

The most popular anthology of Jorge Luis Borges's short stories, Fictions is a wildly original and influential collection of fantastic tales, translated from the Spanish with an afterword by Andrew Hurley in Penguin Modern Classics. Nobody before Borges had ever attempted this strange and wonderful mixture of arcana, popular literature, national myth, the nature of time and classical themes. Now...

The new paperback series - Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker 'Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window' A chilling masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also illuminated dark corners of Victorian sexuality. When Jonathan Harker visits...

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last completed novel, is edited by Arnold Goldman with an introduction and notes by Richard Godden in Penguin Modern Classics. Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash, the French Riviera was the stylish place for wealthy Americans to visit. Among the most fashionable are the Divers, Dick and Nicole, who...

Ambler's electrifying Istanbul-set thriller from 1962, and the basis for the classic film Topkapi. Arthur Abdel Simpson is a failed journalist and soon-to-be failed thief, embittered by memories of his unhappy childhood in England and eking out a living in Athens. When he spots a newly arrived tourist at the airport, he offers his services as a private driver and...

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons' hilarious comic novel of rural life, is new to Penguin Modern Classics. When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders — cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness;...