Editions

Uncommon Type

Uncommon Type

  • Some Stories

RELEASED 26/11/2020

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM THE AUTHOR

'Impressive' The Times
'Funny and pitch perfect' Sunday Express
'I blink, bubble and boggle in amazed admiration' Stephen Fry
'These stories are a hit' Financial Times

A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A World War II veteran grappling with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. Four friends travelling to the moon in a rocket ship built in the backyard. These are just some of the stories that Tom Hanks captures with great affection, humour and insight - the human condition in all its foibles.

Reviews

  • All American life is here ... Delightful ... Hanks’s prose is impressive, with a strong voice and stylistic flair ... so fluent, convincing and confident that you forget it belongs to Tom Hanks, movie star. He's just a writer. And he’s going to write a great novel one day.

    The Times

  • On the page, as on screen, Hanks is, simply, a lovely person to be around ... Hanks captures the child’s-eye view of the world with pitch-perfect accuracy … and as a writing project it nails perhaps the hardest thing of all: a story in which nothing and everything happens.

    Guardian

About the Author

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks has been an actor, screenwriter, director and through Playtone, a producer. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. This is his first collection of fiction.

Tom Hanks

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Features

Listen to audiobooks read by Oscar winners and nominees

Oscars season is upon us – did you know that some of the Best Actress and Best Actor nominees narrated Penguin audiobooks? Listen to some familiar faces read aloud from much-loved titles below.
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Extracts

An exclusive short story from Tom Hanks’ Uncommon Type

"Bette’s mind processed the vision, the very first blemish in the fabric of her new life on Greene Street — the guy next door looking for a woman." Read on for a short story from Tom Hanks' Uncommon Type
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William Heinemann to publish Tom Hanks

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