Classics

Lispector at her most philosophically radical.   A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry...

'One of the very great writers of the last century' -- Guardian'Lispector had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before' -- Colm Toibin'He'd wait for her, she knew that now. Until she learned'Lori yearns for love yet is scared of...

One of Steinbeck’s touchstone novels, East of Eden is a grand family saga which explores themes almost biblical in their intensity. Through multiple generations of two families, Steinbeck crafts a brooding masterpiece of familial rivalry and...

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.Set in a place beyond...

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New...

Marshalling wit and sharp political insight to deliver a passionate polemic calling for women’s intellectual and financial independence, Woolf’s seminal 1929 essay remains one of the twentieth century’s most influential pieces of...

One of Elena Ferrante's Top 40 Books by WomenG.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white 'as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed'. There she sees a cockroach - black, dusty,...

Clarice Lispector's sensational, prize-winning debut novel Near to the Wild Heart was published when she was just twenty-three and earned her the name 'Hurricane Clarice'. It tells the story of Joana, from her wild, creative childhood, as the 'little...

'My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?'A poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first...

A mystical dialogue between a male author and his creation, this posthumous work has never before been translated, and is a book of particular beauty and strangeness.   A mystical dialogue between a male author (a thinly disguised Clarice Lispector) and...

A haunting exploration of love, loss and community, Vesaas' lyrical novel portrays the powerful bond that forms between two 11-year-old girls - and a tragedy that changes everything. 'She was close to the edge now: the ice laid its hand upon her' The...

The inspiration for the six-part series “Little Birds” from Sophia Al-Maria.These thirteen erotic short stories by the acclaimed author of Henry and June explore the nature of desire, taboo, and female sensuality.From the beach towns of...

National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human...

"Stefan Zweig's brilliant novel, Beware of Pity, is an original and powerful work."-The New York Times The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his...

Truly groundbreaking in its treatment of homosexual relationships and the stigma surrounding them in the 1950s, Baldwin's concise masterpiece focuses on David and Hella's separation in Paris and David's subsequent entanglement with the passionate...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I MeanRichly textured with memories from her own childhood and married life...

Following a man miraculously in tune with nature and far less so with his community, this nuanced masterpiece from the author of The Ice Palace is a striking and profoundly humane portrait of neurodiversity and the beauty and pain of seeing things...

Empire Thriller of the Month for April 2020. Blood will have blood… I lean forward on my elbows, so my face is only a few inches from his, so he hears every word when I lower my voice. “It must eat you alive, not knowing. Not knowing who,...

Read the greatest rediscovered classic of recent years'A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life' -- Ian McEwanWilliam Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes...

A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille's Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated by Joachim Neugroschal, and published with essays by...