Penguin Classics

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell is his beloved account of childhood in Corfu, now published in a beautiful Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time. "Living in Corfu was rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas." It is 1935 and the Durrells have escaped the leaden summer skies of Bournemouth...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Maigret's Pickpocket finds Inspector Maigret savouring a beautiful spring morning in Paris when he has his wallet stolen by a pickpocket. The wallet is returned the next day, but on the condition that Maigret visit the thief's apartment. What Maigret discovers there sees him...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Inspector Maigret finds himself back on Paris's Rue des Acacias just ten days after cracking another case there. This time it is the murder of a gangster he has known for over twenty years—one he always suspected was behind a string of jewellery robberies...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Maigret's Holiday begins with Inspector Maigret's wife falling ill during their seaside holiday at Les Sables-d'Olonne. When he visits her in the hospital, he receives a strange note instructing him to see a patient in another ward. Soon, he finds himself unexpectedly drawn into...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Inspector Maigret is known for his infallible instinct, for getting at the truth no matter how complex the case. However, when someone starts killing women on the streets of Montmartre, he finds himself confounded. In the sweltering Paris summer heat, with the city in...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Xavier Manto, a mild-mannered toy salesman from a Paris department store, has come to confide his secret fears to Inspector Maigret—he suspects his wife is plotting to poison him. Then when Maigret receives a visit from Madame Manton on the same day, he is...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. It seems like a hoax when Inspector Maigret receives a series of strange phone calls from a terrified man claiming he is being followed - and that his life is at risk. But that night, the man is found dead in the Place de...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Inspector Maigret and his wife take a much-needed rest cure in the spa town of Vichy, where they quickly become used to the leisurely pace of life. But when a woman whom they regularly pass by on their daily strolls is murdered, Maigret can't...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. For the first time in his career, Inspector Maigret receives a written summons to the Prefect's office, where he is shocked to discover himself accused of a crime. With his career and reputation on the line, Maigret must fight to prove his innocence. Has...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Maigret and the Old People follows Inspector Maigret as he is called to the home of the Comte de Saint-Hilaire, a highly respected official who has been found shot dead in the study of his elegant Parisian home. The violent death of this distinguished...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. Inspector Maigret is supposed to be working to stop the gangs of robbers terrorising Paris, but then a body is found, dumped in the Bois de Boulogne. It turns out to be a quiet, likeable burglar he has known for years, and for whom...

A riveting, funny coming-of-age story - the first volume in Pirkko Saisio's award-winning Helsinki trilogy. Grandpa says everyone should leave me alone. If I want to be a boy, then I'm a boy - simple as that. Writing in the wake of her father's death, the narrator of Pirkko Saisio's autofictional novel transports us to the 1950s Finland of her...

Never before translated short stories by the legendary genius Ágota Kristóf. I Don't Care – it's not even pretty. The song is sad, and old, so old. I Don't Care presents the best short fiction by the Hungarian master Ágota Kristóf, selected by the author herself and available in English for the first time. Written immediately before her acclaimed Notebook...

A haunting novel exploring a mother's fierce love for her disabled son as she grapples with her own mental health, by the author of the feminist cult classic The Princess of 72nd Street. For Clarence's mother, life revolves around her young son; she takes him to see specialists to find the cause of his blindness and developmental delays, protects him...

Together, the poetry of Hesiod and Theognis offers a superb introduction to the life and thought of ancient Greece. Hesiod's Theogony (c. 725 BCE) is a powerful creation myth: an epic, bloody tale of dark forces, sex, and violence, tracing the history of the world from primeval Chaos to the establishment of Zeus as supreme king of the gods. In...

A feminist cult classic about love, independence and what it means to be an individual, translated into English for the first time. 'I want to have him, I really do. I just don't want him to have me.' Martina and Gustav, students in 1970s Stockholm, meet and fall immediately into coupledom. But what is coupledom? A route to marriage? A...

New in Penguin Japanese Classics: an innovative feminist novel about motherhood and girlhood. Introducing Penguin Japanese Classics—a collection of some of Japan's most celebrated and ground-breaking 20th century writers, with covers inspired by Japanese art and design. Taking us from a sun-drenched affair in a seaside town to an underground 'ark' full of shadows and eccentrics, with stops at mountains...

A superb new edition of the essays of one of the greatest and most enjoyable prose writers in English. David Hume reshaped, redirected, and re-energised the English essay. His sceptical, rational, self-questioning persona created what amounted to a new intellectual arena, in which it was possible to think afresh about the world and the self. When he famously wrote that...

A superb new edition of the essays of one of the greatest and most enjoyable prose writers in English. David Hume reshaped, redirected, and re-energised the English essay. His sceptical, rational, self-questioning persona created what amounted to a new intellectual arena, in which it was possible to think afresh about the world and the self. When he famously wrote that...

A selection of the best short stories by Oh Jung-hee, one of South Korea's most influential writers. In this emblematic selection of her stories, Oh Jung-hee probes beneath the surface of seemingly quotidian lives to expose nightmarish family configurations warped by desertion, psychosis, and death. In Chinatown, a young girl living on the edge of the city's Chinese community comes...

Black Shack Alley is a semiautobiographical Caribbean novel that explores shifting race relations in early twentieth-century colonial Martinique. It features a foreword by the Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau. This Penguin Classic follows in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, as Joseph Zobel's 1950 novel chronicles the coming-of-age of Jose, a young boy dealing with issues of power and identity...

Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor. Peter Kropotkin's anarchist texts had a fundamental impact on 19th and 20th century radicals of all kinds. These essays from The Conquest of Bread are bravura examples of his optimistic and angry vision of a world in which the just actions of the...

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. Widely considered to be one of the greatest ever writers of the form, Anton Chekhov's short stories offer unforgettable character, crystalline expression, and a beautiful, quiet uncertainty. Collected here are five of his very best...

Woman Hating is Andrea Dworkin's seminal debut which argued that a deep-rooted hatred of women has reigned in society for centuries—and still governs us today. 'This book is an action, a political action where revolution is the goal.' Andrea Dworkin's blazing, prophetic debut argued that a deep-rooted hatred of women has been ingrained in society for centuries—and still governs us...

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is G. K. Chesterton's wild and whimsical debut novel, set in a future embattled London. London, 1984. Democracy has given up the ghost. England's ruler is randomly selected, and this year it's Auberon Quin, a clerk with an odd sense of humour. Quin mandates that each borough of London become an independent neo-medievalist state, complete...

A new collection of Rudyard Kipling's short stories, selected and edited by Jan Montefiore. Rudyard Kipling is one of the most magical storytellers in the English language. This new selection brings together the best of his short writings, following the development of his work over fifty years. They take us from the harsh, cruel, vividly realised world of the 'Indian'...

New in Penguin Japanese Classics - a gripping novel about a love affair gone wrong. Introducing Penguin Japanese Classics - a collection of some of Japan's most celebrated and ground-breaking 20th-century writers, with covers inspired by Japanese art and design. Taking us from a sun-drenched affair in a seaside town to an underground 'ark' full of shadows and eccentrics, with...

New to Classics, with a new introduction by one of the best known Egyptologists of our time. The Book of the Dead is a unique collection of funerary texts from a wide variety of sources, dating from the fifteenth to the fourth century BC. Consisting of spells, prayers and incantations, each section contains the words of power to overcome obstacles...

A gripping tale of adultery and murder served hard-boiled. When Maude Slocum—beautiful, frightened and angry—comes to Lew Archer's office with a poison pen letter intended for her husband, he reluctantly agrees to help her. As he follows the Slocums around, Archer finds that Mrs. Slocum might have the least of the family's troubles—her teenage daughter is desolate, her husband is...

Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life The Decay of Lying includes two of Wilde's most comprehensive—and witty—explorations of his aesthetic philosophy: The Decay of Lying and The Critic as Artist. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war, and...

SS-GB is a chilling alternative history in which the Nazis have conquered Britain, now featured in the iconic Penguin Crime series. It is 1941, and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed, and the King imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down....

Quicksand by Nella Larsen is a powerful first novel that evocatively portrays the racial and gender restrictions that can mark a life. Born to a white mother and an absent black father, and despised for her dark skin, Helga Crane has long had to fend for herself. As a young woman, Helga teaches at an all-black school in the South,...

Our Game, John le Carré's post-Cold War masterpiece, is filled with suspense, betrayal, desire, and drama. The Cold War is over, and retired secret servant Tim Cranmer has been put out to pasture, spending his days making wine on his Somerset estate. But then he discovers that his former double agent Larry—dreamer, dissolute, philanderer, and disloyal friend—has vanished, along with...

Inspector Maigret investigates a case of deception in an isolated community. Maigret has been interrogating Carl Andersen for seventeen hours without a confession. He's either innocent or a very good liar. So why was the body of a diamond merchant found at his isolated mansion? Why is his sister always shut away in her room? And why does everyone at...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. New York City in 1979 by Kathy Acker is a vivid tale of art, sex, blood, junkies, and whores in New York's underground. This work comes from the cult literary icon Kathy Acker, renowned for her...

A compelling collection of new Kafka translations in a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition. A brilliant new translation of Kafka's best-known work, published for the 125th anniversary of his birth. This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation...

A richly enthralling and evocative account of King Arthur. Le Morte D'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's richly evocative and enthralling version of the Arthurian legend. Recounting Arthur's birth, his ascendancy to the throne after claiming Excalibur, his ill-fated marriage to Guenever, the treachery of Morgan le Fay, and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, it magically weaves...

One of the great chase stories—Nazi agents will stop at nothing to kill a British weapons expert on his long, fraught journey home from Istanbul. It is 1940 and Mr Graham, a quietly-spoken engineer and arms expert, has just finished high-level talks with the Turkish government. And now somebody wants him dead. The previous night, three shots were fired at...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Angered by the loss of his son in battle, the Earl of Northumberland supports another rebellion against King Henry IV, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Sick and weary, the old King sends out his forces, including the unruly Sir...

One of the last surviving members of the futurist generation, Bruno Munari has been the enfant terrible of Italian art and design for most of the twentieth century. How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design, and the media have changed our vision forever....

Scams, heists, and murders abound in a high-energy caper. 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 the morgue, the con is up. Now Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed,...

A biting science fiction satire of American racism, and one of the first works of Afrofuturism. It's New Year's Day in 1933 in New York City and Max Disher, a young black man, has just heard the news: a mysterious doctor has discovered a strange process that can turn black skin white—a new way to 'solve the American race problem'....

A collectible new Penguin Classics series – beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Poems is Wilfred Owen's only volume of poetry, first published posthumously in 1920 and edited by his friend and mentor, Siegfried Sassoon. Owen is regarded as one of the best poets of World War I and composed nearly all of his poems in just over...

Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking and horrific of all the Greek tragedies. Dominating the play is Medea herself, a towering and powerful figure who demonstrates Euripides' unusual willingness to give voice to a woman's case. Alcestis, a tragicomedy, is based on a magical myth...

Shakespeare's Four Tragedies - Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet and Othello - are presented in a stunning Penguin Clothbound Classics edition. The theme of the great Shakespearean tragedies is a hero's fall from grace due to a fatal character flaw. Whether it is the ruthless ambition of Macbeth or the folly of Lear, the irresolution of Hamlet or the suspicion of...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The...

Euripides (c.484-406 BC) was the most controversial of the three great Greek tragedians and the most modern. His major themes - religious scepticism, the injustices suffered by women, and the destructive folly of war - are issues still vitally important today. Ion, a play more concerned with character than ideas, deals with the problem of reconciling religious faith with the...

This collection includes many of the famous cases—and great strokes of brilliance—that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis, Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue, and evil in such cases as The Speckled Band, in which a terrified woman...

This poem has been called 'the Qu'ran of the Persian language'. Begun in 1262 AD, Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, or 'spiritual couplets', is thought to be the longest single-authored 'mystical' poem ever written. As the spiritual masterpiece of the Persian Sufi tradition, it teaches how to progress to the ultimate goal of the Sufi path - union with God. Jalaloddin Rumi was...

Published to coincide with the release of the film Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar Winner Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut), starring Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) and Ben Whishaw (Brideshead Revisited, Perfume). John Keats died aged just twenty-five. He left behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written, inspired...

'The undisputed masterpiece of negritude and a poetic milestone of anti-colonialism' - Guardian 'We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout.' This blazing autobiographical poem by the founder of the negritude movement became a rallying cry for decolonisation when it appeared in 1939. Following one man's return from Europe to his homeland of Martinique, Return to My Native Land...

Edited and first published by William Caxton in 1485, Le Morte d'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's unique and splendid version of the Arthurian legend. Mordred's treason, the knightly exploits of Tristan, Lancelot's fatally divided loyalties and his love for Guenever, the quest for the Holy Grail; all the elements are there woven into a wonderful completeness by the magic of...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series - beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Goblin Market and Other Poems was Christina Rossetti's first full volume of poetry, published in 1862. The collection received widespread critical praise and established Rossetti as the foremost female poet of her time. Tennyson, Hopkins, and Swinburne all admired her work. The title poem Goblin...

Either/Or is a brilliant exploration of the conflicts inherent in life between living aesthetically and living morally. In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters—the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section—Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence. He contemplates subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom,...

Xenophon's fascinating defence of Socratic thought. After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's to survive, and while it offers a very personal interpretation of Socratic thought,...

New to the Penguin Pocket Hardbacks series - books that have changed the history of thought, in sumptuous, clothbound editions. In Utopia, Thomas More gives us a traveller's account of a newly discovered island where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based on natural reason and justice, and human fulfilment is open to all. As the traveller, Raphael, describes the...

Scandinavia's best-loved children's classic from the first female writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature Nils Holgersson is a naughty boy who tortures animals and never listens to his parents - until one day he wakes up as an elf. Deeply puzzled by his new status, he climbs on a gander's back and flies away with him, joining a...

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles (496-406 BC) to create a powerful trilogy about mankind's struggle against fate. King Oedipus tells of a man who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he does not realise he has committed and who then inflicts a brutal punishment upon himself. With profound insights into the human condition, it is...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The beautiful but sharp-tongued Katherina has sworn never to accept the demands of any would-be husband. But when she is pursued by the wily Petruchio, it seems that she has finally met her match. And as he meets her own caustic words with...

A collection of the beautiful, surprising poems of Catullus. One of the most versatile of Roman poets, Catullus wrote verse of an almost unparalleled diversity and stylistic agility, from the brevity of the epigram to the sustained elegance of the elegy. This collection contains all of Catullus' extant work and includes his lyrics to the notorious Clodia Metelli—married, seductive, and...

Golding makes Ovid both dreamy and robust. Here we can listen to the English language as it moves confidently into the highest eloquence - Tom Paulin Bringing together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends, Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant Metamorphoses describes a magical world in which men and women are transformed—often by love—into flowers, trees, animals, stones, and...

An English novelist uncovers a trail of crime in Istanbul - and all roads lead to the mysterious master criminal Dimitrios. English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of Turkish police inspector Colonel Haki. It is from him that he first hears of the mysterious Dimitrios - an infamous master criminal, long wanted...

New selection and translation of the great epic story of ancient India, revealing a mythic world of bloody conflict, magic and beauty. The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It holds immense importance to the culture of the Indian subcontinent and is a major text of Hinduism. Its discussion of human goals—artha or 'purpose',...

As we publish all of le Carré's work for the first time, a special look for the books featuring his iconic character, George Smiley. The Honourable Schoolboy is the sixth Smiley novel, where George Smiley, now chief of the battered British Secret Service, seeks revenge for the betrayals of a Soviet double agent.

One of the great country house detective novels, entertaining and ingenious. Marion Sharpe and her mother are quiet and ordinary villagers, enjoying a peaceful life in their country home, the Franchise. Everything changes when a local schoolgirl accuses them of kidnap and abuse, describing the attic room of the house as her prison. Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant is called...

Spenser's masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, is among the most influential poems in the English language. It was the first epic in English and established the possibilities of heroic poetry in the English tradition. The author's intention was to rival, or surpass, the epic romances of the Italian poets Ariosto and Tasso through the "darke conceit" of this poem, which unites...

The Complete Fables provides a meticulous translation of the entire Aesopian collection of fables. This edition offers readers an insightful introduction that delves into the transmission of fable "stock" from Sanskrit to Aesop. The introduction also examines the precise nature of the animals featured within these fables. It aims to rescue the stories from a long-standing tradition of moralistic interpretation...

One of the great masterworks of English literature, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature,...

From the award-winning translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey comes a brilliant new translation of Virgil's great epic. Fleeing the ashes of Troy, Aeneas, Achilles' mighty foe in the Iliad, begins an incredible journey to fulfil his destiny as the founder of Rome. His voyage will take him through stormy seas, entangle him in a tragic love affair, and...

The original mindfulness book, in a landmark new translation by the award-winning translator of the I Ching and The Art of War. A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper. The most translated book in the world after the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, or "Book of the Tao," is a guide to cultivating a life of peace,...

"I think this version is terrific. The light enjambed English hexameters are a great success. The effect is properly propulsive." - Prof A D Nuttall, Oxford Ovid's deliciously witty and exuberant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked Greek and Roman myths and legends in which men and women are transformed,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. When it seems that Julius Caesar may assume supreme power, a plot to destroy him is hatched by those determined to preserve the threatened republic. But the different motives of the conspirators soon become apparent when high principles clash with malice and political...

Faust, Part I by Goethe reworks the late-medieval myth of Dr Faust, a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract or wager with the devil, Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seek to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last for ever. But if...

A new selection of the much-loved Father Brown stories, now part of the Penguin English Library. 'No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be' Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success – refusing the...

Cranford, Gaskell's best-known work, is set in a small rural town inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty. However, domestic peace is constantly threatened by financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and...

A seminal text in the history of modern art, from one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, one of the most famous abstract painters of all time, urges the reader to free themselves from art's traditional bonds to material reality. In this radical theoretical work, he calls for a...

An imposter has a fortune to win and his life to lose in this gripping country house mystery. A stranger enters the Ashby family home posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerisms, appearance, and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped her father's throne, she flees to the forest of Arden where her exiled father holds court. There, dressed as a boy to avoid discovery, she encounters the man she loves – now a...

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief is the inspiration for the new Netflix series, Lupin, starring Omar Sy. A curated collection of the very best adventures of Arsène Lupin, France's most famous gentleman thief. The poor and the innocent have nothing to fear from Lupin; often they profit from his spontaneous generosity. The rich and powerful, and the detective who tries to spoil...