Classics

A witty introduction to the mind of Goethe, in a new translation for the first time in 150 yearsA Penguin ClassicBy the end of the nineteenth century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the world's most celebrated poet, novelist, critic and thinker. Today...

Collecting the inspirational, lyrical poetry of the iconic Persian mystic, this superbly curated volume showcases Rumi's towering love poetry alongside his verse on spirituality and the natural world.   The essential poems of the inspirational...

A hugely enjoyable, page-turning classic Japanese mystery with an ingenious conclusion from the author of The Decagon House Murders, translated into English for the first timeDon’t miss this beautifully constructed, highly entertaining and atmospheric...

This new collection brings together First Love, The Calamative, The End and The Expelled; these four novellas are among the first major works of Beckett's decision to use French as his language of literary composition. Rich in verbal and situational...

The paperback edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s final writings on the lands, inhabitants, and metaphysics of Middle-earth, perfect for those who have read and enjoyed The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth,...

The latest installment in our fully revised edition of Plutarch’s Lives of the great men of the ancient world, this volume focusing on early RomeThe biographies collected in this volume bring together Plutarch’s Lives of those great men who established...

Discover Thomas Pynchon's brilliant writing in this postmodern literature classic.'The greatest, wildest author of his generation' -- GuardianWe could tell you the year is 1944, that the main character is called Tyrone Slothrop and that he has a problem...

The famous tale by the trailblazing subject of major new film ColetteGIGI TRANSLATED BY ROGER SENHOUSE, THE CAT TRANSLATED BY ANTONIA WHITEGigi's days are filled with cigars, lobster, lace and superstitions: the education of a future courtesan. Bored and...

The second volume of a political treatise that changed the worldA vital cornerstone to Marx’s overall theory of economics, the second volume of Capital considers in depth the nature of commodity and the market-place bourgeois society. This immensely...

'What can be said at all can be said clearly; and of what one cannot talk, about that one must be silent.'Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in German in 1921 and in English translation in 1922, is one of the most influential...

In what remains one of his most seminal papers, Freud considers the incompatibility of civilisation and individual happiness, and the tensions between the claims of society and the individual. We all know that living in civilised groups means sacrificing...

Winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, this is one of the defining books of the 1970s, an experimental novel about a young journalist trying to navigate life in America. When Speedboat burst on the scene in the late ’70s it was like...

A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a...

In Nobel Prize-winning author Peter Handke’s The Left-Handed Woman, a young woman faces loneliness and alienation on a journey to find her own life outside of being a wife and mother.One evening, when Marianne and her husband, Bruno, are dining out...

An unforgettable portrait of defiance and authoritarian rule, The Handmaid's Tale is a classic dystopian vision of a terrifyingly believable future. A devastatingly powerful exploration of female oppression with an all-too chilling resonance for our...

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naïve, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way...

A space cruiser, in search of its sister ship, encounters beings descended from self-replicating machines. In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet...

Basil and Josephine charts the coming of age of two privileged youths from quiet Midwestern towns, Basil Duke Lee and Josephine Perry - based on Fitzgerald himself and a combination of his first love Ginevra King and his wife Zelda. As one struggles to...

The 120 Days of Sodom is the most extreme book in the history of literature. The Marquis de Sade narrates the escalating sex-crimes of four libertines who barricade themselves in a remote castle with both male and female victims and accomplices for a...

Four Chinese women, four America daughters - can they learn to understand each other? In 1949 a group of Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and...