Classics

'Fiercely intelligent, very funny and unlike anything else I've ever read' -- MARK HADDON'Original...witty...playful...a wonderfully funny book' -- JAMES WOOD'A triumph - a genuinely new story, a genuinely new form' -- A. S. BYATTEleven-year-old Ludo is...

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,...

For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human   The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept...

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...

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...

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction...

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...

A collection of the most famous cases faced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless creationThis collection of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes includes many of the famous cases - and great strokes of brilliance - that...

'This is the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers' Edmund White, Washington Post. When Arthur Montana, world-renowned 'Emperor of Soul', is found dead in a London pub, his grief-stricken brother looks back over thirty years in the...

A brilliant, bruising depiction of the dark side of 1950s Hollywood, from the author of In Love.At a Hollywood party, a screenwriter rescues an aspiring actress from a drunken suicide attempt. He is married, disillusioned; she is young, seemingly...

Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing...

Following a successful career as an advertising copywriter in 1960s Paris, this stunning, piercingly observed novel from the mother of second wave feminism is finally available in English courtesy of Lauren Elkin's captivating translation. She’s...

'Intense sexual desire is the greatest thing in the world' A tale of art, sex, blood, junkies and whores in New York's underground, from cult literary icon Kathy Acker. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic...

A reporter embarks on an investigation of a string of unconnected suicides—which then leads into an exploration of the phenomenon of suicide itself—in this elegant existential novel, the third and final volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s...

Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. But he has dreams - vivid, extraordinary day dreams - in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he - a weary, put upon middle-aged man - is the hero of his own...

Following a married doctor and poet who falls in love with a political activist’s wife in revolutionary Russia, Pasternak’s heartbreaking epic remains one of the greatest literary love stories. Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in...

This critical edition of the epic 1968 Malian novel explores its enduring literary power and the racist plagiarism scandal that devastated its author, the first African winner of France’s prestigious Renaudot Prize.An engrossing, tragic tale...

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...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL. 'Our very best writer today' -- Milan Kundera Sparkling with comic genius and narrative exuberance, I Served the King of England is a story of how the unbelievable came true. Its remarkable hero, Ditie, is a hotel...

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."Julian of Norwich is one of the most celebrated figures of the English Middle Ages. She is esteemed as one of the subtlest writers and profoundest thinkers of the period...