CLASSICS

The buttoned-up world of the British upper classes is exploded by the brilliance, wit and audacity of Saki's bomb-like stories. In 'The Open Window' an imaginative teenager gives a visitor...

'The best translation of Crime and Punishment currently available... An especially faithful re-creation...with a coiled-spring kinetic energy... Don't miss it' Washington PostConsumed by the idea of his own special destiny,...

'Malone', writes Malone, 'is what I am called now.' On his deathbed, and wiling away the time with stories, the octogenarian Malone's account of his condition is intermittent and contradictory,...

Molloy is Samuel Beckett's best-known novel, and his first published work to be written in French, ushering in a period of concentrated creativity in the late 1940s which included the...

'The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect and, while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.'The biting cold...

'The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude'When 'The Awakening' was first published in...

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit,...

'the greatest short story writer who has ever lived'Raymond Carver's unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John...

'The victor belongs to the spoils.'F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), is a devastating portrait of a generation of wealthy young Americans who struggle to find...

His first published work of fiction (1934), More Pricks Than Kicks is a set of ten interlocked stories, set in Dublin and involving their adrift hero Belacqua in a series...

Edited by J. C. C. Mays Murphy, Samuel Beckett's first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and...

Borges' stories have a deceptively simple, almost laconic style. In maddeningly ingenious stories that play with the very form of the short story, Borges returns again and again to his...

One of the most remarkable artists of our age.' MARIO VARGAS LLOSA THE BOOK OF SAND was the last of Borges' major collections to be published. The stories are, in...

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War.The most...

Beginning with a dilemma about whether he spends more money on reading or smoking, George Orwell's entertaining and uncompromising essays go on to explore everything from the perils of second-hand...

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATORS RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKYDostoevsky's beautiful writing style and universal themes make this epic 19th century novel unmissable. The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a...

The young D'Artagnan and the legendary musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis are 'the inseparables' - ready to sacrifice everything in a duel or game of dice in order to defend...

FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO'Solzhenitsyn is one of the towering figures of the age, as a writer, as moralist, as hero' Edward CrankshawAfter years in enforced...

'Wharton's dazzling skills as a stylist, creator of character, ironical observer and unveiler of passionate, thwarted emotions have earned her a devoted following' Sunday TimesNewland Archer and May Welland are...

A gripping biography by the author of Brave New WorldIn 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the...

You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer's error in your copy....

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one...

'It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary'Rediscover Kafka's classic work of psychological horror. The Trial is the terrifying tale of Joseph...

Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths is a collection of short stories and essays showcasing one of Latin America's most influential and imaginative writers. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited by...

Iris Murdoch's extraordinary exploration of human nature shines with intricate detail. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURNSIDEWhen Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys...

Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation. Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of...

Albert Camus' existentialist masterpiece, now in a wonderful new Clothbound Classics editionIn The Outsider, his classic existentialist novel, Camus explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to...

'A liberating and lacerating critique of American racial madness, capitalism and white superiority ... Schuyler's wild, misanthropic, take-no-prisoners satire of American life seems more relevant than ever ... Afrofuturist before...

Clare Kendry has severed all ties to her past. Elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, she is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she renews...

'The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste' Virginia WoolfJane Austen's subtle and witty novel of secrets and suppression, lies and seduction, brilliantly portrays a...

'The first of Hardy's great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his best fiction is remembered' Margaret DrabbleThomas Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow...

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...'Vividly interweaving epic historical drama with personal tragedy, Dickens's gripping novel depicts the lives of two very different men,...

Revealing the breadth of F. Scott Fitzgerald's gift for the short story form, this Penguin Classics edition of The Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories spans multiple genres...

'Jane Austen is a genius, and Northanger Abbey is hugely underrated' Martin AmisWith its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'Hidden away in the Record Department of the...

A brilliant modern translation by Christine Donougher of Victor Hugo's thrilling masterpiece, with an introduction by Robert Tombs. This is the best translation of the novel available in English, as...

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...

'All children, except one, grow up.' It was Friday night. Mr and Mrs Darling were dining out. Nana had been tied up in the backyard. The poor dog was barking,...

'A work of glorious intelligence and literary devices . . . Nonsense becomes a form of higher sense' Malcolm Bradbury'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole . ....

'The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists' Virginia WoolfWith its depiction of the wronged 'pure woman' Tess and its powerful criticism of Victorian hypocrisy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is...

'His novels will endure as long as the language itself' Peter AckroydDickens's haunting late novel depicts the education and development of a young man, Pip, as his life is changed...

Robin Kirkpatrick's masterful verse translation of The Divine Comedy, published in a single volume, is the ideal edition for students as well as the general reader coming to this great...

Based on his experiences as a policeman in Burma, George Orwell's first novel presents a devastating picture of British colonial ruleBurmese Days describes corruption and imperial bigotry in a society...

George Orwell's searing account of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic...

The Plague is Albert Camus's world-renowned fable of fear and courageThe townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and...

George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society.'You...