Classics

“The great plague novel.” —The New YorkerSet in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for...

Austerlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe.In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his...

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...

'This century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism' -- Angela DavisWritten at the height of the Algerian war for independence from French colonial rule and first published in 1961, Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth has provided...

“Comyns’ novel is deranged in ways that shouldn’t be disclosed.” —Ben MarcusThis is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows, “quacking their approval”...

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 Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, with an...

The erotically charged tale of an illicit affair between the wife of a paralysed grandee and his earthy gamekeeper, Lawrence’s notorious and widely lauded novel has much to say about social class, sexual desire and gender politics.   Banned and...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore.' Shipwrecked in a storm at sea,...

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,...

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.Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics,...

Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to India and a new cosmopolitan model for western civilisation.In Alexander's childhood, his defiant character was molded into the makings...

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...

As Funeral Games opens, Alexander the Great lies dying. Around his body gather the generals, the provincial satraps and the royal wives, already competing for the prizes of power and land. Only Bagoas, the Persian boy mourning in the shadows, wants...

An NYRB Classics OriginalWhen the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed...

FICTIONS is perhaps the single most mysterious and extraordinary collection of short stories written this century. Influenced by writers as disparate as Lewis Carroll, Stevenson and Cervantes, Borges is nethertheless a complete original who can turn dry...

Essential poems by the late New York poet.   Lunch Poems, first published in 1964 by City Lights Books as number nineteen in the Pocket Poets series, is widely considered to be Frank O'Hara's freshest and most accomplished collection of poetry. Edited by...

An official tie-in edition of Philip K. Dick's dazzling speculative novel to accompany the new TV series, executive produced by Ridley Scott.Philip K. Dick's acclaimed cult novel gives us a horrifying glimpse of an alternative world - one where the...

'A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul' -- Guardian.Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving,...

Tender-hearted and empathetic, Nabokov’s account of an émigré Russian professor struggling through a tenure at an American university wrings belly laughs from the wistful and melancholy. Professor Timofey Pnin, late of Tsarist Russia, is now...

In Persian myth, it is said that Akbar the Great built a palace which he filled with newborns, attended only by mutes, in order to learn whether language is innate or aquired. As the children grew into their silent and difficult world, this palace became...