CLASSICS

Continuing the saga begun in I, Claudius, Robert Graves's Claudius the God is a compelling fictional autobiography of the Roman emperor, published with an introduction by Barry Unsworth in Penguin...

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...

The story of the title deals with a little boy named Larry and his feelings towards his father. When his father returns home from World War II, Larry is resentful...

A philosophical novel described by fellow existentialist Sartre as 'perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood' of his novels, Albert Camus' The Fall is translated by Robin Buss in...

Exploring the decadence of Jazz Age New York through a fictionalised version of his own marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned includes an introduction...

L.P. Hartley's moving exploration of a young boy's loss of innocence The Go-Between is edited with an introduction and notes by Douglas Brooks-Davies in Penguin Modern Classics.'The past is a...

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

'A wonderful book' George OrwellRobert Tressell's spirited attack on selfish capitalism is a masterpiece of wit and political passion and one of the most authentic novels of English working class...

When Joel Knox's mother dies, he is sent into the exotic unknown of the Deep South to live with a father he has never seen. But once he gets there,...

'Shooting an Elephant' is Orwell's searing and painfully honest account of his experience as a police officer in imperial Burma; killing an escaped elephant in front of a crowd 'solely...

Is it possible to die a happy death?This is the central question of Camus's astonishing early novel, published posthumously and greeted as a major literary event. It tells the story...

June 1940 was the summer of defeat for the French soldiers, deserted by their officers, utterly demoralized, awaiting the Armistice. Day by day, hour by hour, Iron in the Soul...

Drawing directly on original manuscripts, this collection comprises the major short stories published after Kafka's death. It includes The Great Wall of China, Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor, Investigations of a...

Vladimir Nabokov's early novel is the dazzling story of the coarse, strange yet oddly endearing chess-playing genius Luzhin. Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood and rising to the rank of...

A poignant coming-of-age novel set in a Welsh mining town, Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern ClassicsGrowing...

It is September 1938 and during a heatwave Europe tensely awaits the outcome of the Munich conference, where they will learn if there is to be a war. In Paris...

Written in Berlin in 1934, Invitation to a Beheading contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes...

When Kino, a poor Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana and their son Coyotito will...

Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is translated from the French by Grace Frick with an introduction...

'The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further' Martin AmisA penniless and parentless Chicago boy growing up in the Great Depression, Augie March drifts through...

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...

Saki is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for England's 'Golden Afternoon' - the slow and peaceful years before the First World War. Although, like so many of his generation, he...

Taking its title from T.S. Eliot's modernist poem The Waste Land, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a chronicle of Britain's decadence and social disintegration between the First and...

'A wonderful bitter-sweet book, written with disarming simplicity' Esther Freud'It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,' says Anna Morgan, eighteen years old and...

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, an intrepid and eccentric adventurer, transferred his passion for flying to the written word by writing several classics of aviation literature, including Southern Mail and Night Flight....

Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write....

A gripping work of psychological horror, in its depiction of bureaucracy run amok Franz Kafka's The Trial skirts the line between fantasy and reality. This Penguin Classics edition is translated...

A surreal work of psychological horror, Franz Kafka's The Castle is translated by J. A. Underwood with an introduction by Idris Parry in Penguin Modern Classics.The Castle is the story...

Ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside from the Black Death and tell stories to pass the time. From the unfaithful wife who unwittingly eats her lover's heart to...

The illicit relationship between Peter Abelard, a medieval philosopher, and his young pupil Heloise is one of history's most legendary and tragic love affairs. From reckless ecstasy to public scandal...

Henry is naive and has never experienced love. When he meets golden-haired Edna in a train carriage, however, his world changes forever. But the intensity of their feelings threatens their...

The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover the classic dystopian masterpiece beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in...

The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's classic dystopian masterpiece beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more...

The French Writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), was born in Lyon. His first two books, SOUTHERN MAIL and NIGHT FLIGHT, are distinguished by a poetic evocation of the...

A daring work of experimental, Modernist genius, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century, and the crowning glory of Joyce's life. The...

The articles collected in George Orwell's Essays illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who elevated political writing to...

'A brilliantly and preposterously funny book' Guardian'A flawless comic novel ... I loved it then, as I do now. It has always made me laugh out loud' Helen Dunmore, The...

Dorothy Parker, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the spirit of the Jazz Age in her poetry and prose, and The Collected Dorothy Parker includes an introduction by Brendan...

A meticulously-observed drama of class warfare, E.M. Forster's Howards End explores the conflict inherent within English society, unveiling the character of a nation as never before. This Penguin Classics edition...

SHERLOCK HOLMES IS NOT ONLY THE MOST FAMOUS CHARACTER IN CRIME FICTION BUT THE MOST FAMOUS CHARACTER IN ALL OF FICTION.'Holmes has a timeless intelligence that puts him head, shoulders...

Meticulously selected and artfully recreated, the selection of stories in Italian is vast and ranges geographically from Corsica and Sicily to Venice and the Alps. Calvino is himself clearly captivated...

A daring critique of communism and how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, Camus' essay examines the revolutions in France and Russia, and argues that since they were...

NADJA is a Surrealist romance, and has come to be known as a book which defined that movement's attitude towards life. With its blend of intimate confession and sense of...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound...

Deadly forces are about to be awakened ...In the degenerate, unliked backwater of Dunwich, Wilbur Whately, a most unusual child, is born. Of unnatural parentage, he grows at an uncanny...

Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. It describes his search for 'a practical religion not promising...

Some blame the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville on the legend of a fearsome and ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his Devonshire family for generations. So...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, PLUS EXTENSIVE NOTES AND REFERENCES BY HERMIONE LEEThis volume combines two books which were among the greatest contributions to feminist literature this century. Together they form a...