Classics

Glen Runciter is dead.Or is he?Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and...

Part of the Penguin's Clothbound Classics range. A stunning Penguin clothbound edition of Homer's great epic, in E. V. Rieu's classic translation. The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without...

'How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times' -- Washington PostHannah Arendt's chilling analysis of the conditions that led to the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes is a...

Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is one of the most important philosophical works of the nineteenth century, the basic statement of one important stream of post-Kantian thought. It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest...

The first volume of a political treatise that changed the worldOne of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in...

The third volume of a political treatise that changed the worldUnfinished at the time of Marx’s death in 1883 and first published with a preface by Frederick Engels in 1894, the third volume of Capital strives to combine the theories and concepts of the...

'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a...

One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, Utilitarianism propounds the view that the value or rightness of an action rests in how well it promotes the welfare of those affected by it, aiming for 'the greatest happiness of the...

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. THE CONSOLATION was written...

'I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night.'Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash the French Riviera was the stylish place for wealthy Americans...

A dazzling, daring tale of poets at the end of the world, Distant Star is Roberto Bolano's miniature dystopian masterpieceAlberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unpromising member of Chile’s young poetry scene. But the military coup...

At a Christmas party, a revelation shatters a man's complacency foreverAt a winter gathering in Dublin, friends and family come together for an evening of music, conversation and ritual. As the night unfolds, small tensions surface, and a chance...

Four of Kurt Vonnegut’s best dystopian stories, Monkey Business distils his darkly comic vision of the modern world and the cost of trying to engineer a better life.In a future where everyone is forced to be equal, a gifted teenager dares...

This wonderful translation of Dream Story will allow a fresh generation of readers to enjoy this beautiful, heartless and baffling novella. Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife ware driven apart into rival worlds of...

INTRODUCED BY PHILIP HENSHER'Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. As a reader, I have found huge pleasure in returning to Taylor's novels and short...

The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange private fury, and treats his family with...

Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year-old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of...

'She's no good, that girl. Much too individualistic'This is the story of Fenfang who, determined to carve out a life more independent than her provincial roots, gets a job as a film extra in Beijing. But living a modern life is not as easy as it looks in...

'Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant; and to undertake that which surpasseth his power!'The Caliph Vathek is dissolute and debauched, and hungry for knowledge. When the mysterious Giaour offers him boundless...

After all, the "Moscarda" he believed himself to be was different when he was alone, or with his wife, his tenant, or his friends. And there were hundreds--no, thousands--of additional Moscardas in the minds of everyone who had met or heard of him...