The Penguin English Library Edition of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 'I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct!' she exclaimed. 'Nor will I for a minute' Hardy's powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning...

Originally published in 1967, Ngugi's third novel is his best known and most ambitious work. "A Grain of Wheat" portrays several characters in a village whose intertwined lives are transformed by the 1952-1960 Emergency in Kenya. As the action follows...

A poignant coming-of-age novel set in a Welsh mining town, Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern Classics Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught...

A lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer’s “nimble gallop” and brings an ancient epic to new life. The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of...

The classic portrayal of court life in tenth-century JapanWritten by the court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian...

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else...

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the moving follow-up to Laurie Lee's acclaimed Cider with Rosie Abandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin...

In the 1940s, it was believed that homosexuality had been becoming more widespread in the aftermath of war. A moral panic ensued, centred around London as the place to which gay men gravitated.In a major new anthology, Peter Parker explores what it...

Jane Austen's first published work, meticulously constructed and sparkling with her unique witA Penguin ClassicMarianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her...

The culmination of Jane Austen's genius, a sparkling comedy of love and marriageNow a major motion picture starring Anya Taylor-Joy  Beautiful, clever, rich—and single—Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no...

A powerful reimagining of the age of European exploration, Natives of My Person tells the story of a nameless Commandant who sets sail under imperial orders – somewhere between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries – to locate the...

Charlie Heller is a CIA cryptographer, a quiet man in a back-room job. He’s not a spy, let alone an assassin. But when his beloved fiancée is murdered by terrorists and his employers refuse to pursue her killers, Heller decides to take...

udge Dee is again in relentless pursuit of evil in one of van Gulik's most strange, atmospheric and ingenious murder mysteries. Set in a remote, freezing part of China, the novel twists together a girl's disappearance, the theft of some jewels and a...

Sailor, former henchman and trouble-accruing gangster, travels from Chicago to Santa Fe, New Mexico, looking for revenge and for money. But it's hard to make a dishonest buck when everything seems to be against him. It is Fiesta, it is hot, thousands of...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksRumi’s verses have been a balm for readers’ souls for over eight centuries. This exquisite selection brings together some of the Persian mystic’s most profound, evocative and...

Stanislaw Lem is perhaps the most original and influential European science-fiction writer of the twentieth century.The Cyberiad, one of Lem's most beloved works, follows the exploits of the Trurl and Klapaucius, two ingenious 'constructors'. In...

''Do I wish to keep up with the times? No. My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can''The great American poet, novelist and environmental activist argues for a life lived slowly.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit...

During his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for.In Jane Austen’s breezy and entirely biased telling of English history, Mary, Queen of Scots is a scandalously wronged victim, Elizabeth I is a wicked villain and most...

‘Trees are not just living things, but feeling beings, like us. Better keep a watchful eye over them…’ Ezo spruce, hinoki, cherry blossoms. Persimmon, maple, cypress. The trees of Japan cast a spell on those who visit its...

One of the greatest translations of all time: Scott Moncrieff''s classic version of Proust, published in three volumes. This third volume includes The Captive, The Sweet Cheat Gone and Time Regained.Proust''s masterpiece is one of the...