Classics

Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo’s charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously...

Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve his...

A passionate but unsentimental depiction of conflict between classes, sexes and generations.Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his...

The complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath—essential reading for anyone who has been moved and fascinated by the poet's life and work."A genuine literary event.... Plath's journals contain marvels of discovery." —The New York...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America—and a master of American fiction—we share a grown woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. "An...

Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a "revenge tragedy," in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its...

Things: A Story of the Sixties is the story of a young couple who want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is through ownership of 'things'. Perec's first novel won the Prix Renaudot and became the cult book for a generation...

Read Kurt Vonnegut's powerful masterpiece, which is as timely now as when it was first published. Billy Pilgrim – hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier – has become unstuck in time...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books.Tristessa is a strange fever-dream of morphine sickness and belly-deep sadness. Or, in the words of Allen Ginsberg: ‘a narrative meditation studying a hen, a rooster, a dove, a cat, a...

In these two captivating short stories from a towering figure in world literature and the first non-European winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, Rabindranath Tagore maps the slow undoing of two Bengali families with his customary lyricism and fierce...

“A magical writer—one of the greatest of the twentieth century.” —Margaret Atwood. “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison.A classic...

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Arrested in Cologne for remarking that the Fuhrer looked sweaty, nineteen-year-old Sanna has fled to Frankfurt. But her troubles are far from over. Her best friend Gerti has fallen for a Jewish...

"No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to both the general and the special reader."—Randall Jarrell   The one hundred and fifty-six poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's...

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,...

In pursuit of color, fire, and the unknown. Ophelia abandons her home in Amsterdam and embarks on a journey of self-discovery that takes her across the globe. Led by strange connections and coincidences, she sets out on a solo trip to Lanzarote, travels...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books.‘But how sweet a fruit the ‘suppose’ must be, that people will sup and sup on it! A juicy fruit, like a lychee but without the pit, sparkling and light green: a fruit that hides...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. A young writer leaves the city to complete her manuscript in a small coastal town, but finds herself writing about the lives of its inhabitants instead – their occupation with memory and...

Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksThe Time Machine is the great, gleeful anarchist novel of the 1890s. It is both a thrilling adventure story and a satire on religion, evolution and human hopes. With this book, Wells invented an...

A wickedly funny work of depraved genius by one of Brazil’s most radical twentieth-century writers; imagine the Marquis de Sade as written by Clarice Lespecter.An electrifying masterpiece by one of modern Brazilian literature’s most...