Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning contemporary authors. Translated into over forty languages, his sixteen works of fiction include Midnight’s Children – for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers on the 25th anniversary of the prize and Best of the Booker on the 40th anniversary – Shame, The Satanic Verses, Quichotte and Victory City. His latest book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. His lessons on YouTube have revolutionized learning, garnering billions of views globally. Recognized as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Khan is also the founder of schoolhouse.world, Khan Lab School, and Khan World School, and the author of The One World Schoolhouse. He holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Salman Khan

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's ghost stories whisper of passion, exile, and the things we cannot forget 
 
From bleak New England farms to glittering drawing rooms, Wharton summons hauntings that speak less of horror than of human yearning. This collection includes some of her most powerful supernatural tales, written with elegance and chill. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Bewitched

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula k. Le Guin's beautifully realised space epic of two young friends finding their lives steer a new, and unexpected course 
 
'Our job is to travel. A different job from arrival.' 
 
As the ship Discovery makes its slow way through space towards New Earth, two children, Hsing and Luis, born into the ship's society, come of age together. But just as their destinies seem to be unfolding as decreed, a revelation about Discovery's true course throws new light on to their shared future. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Paradises Lost

Christopher Isherwood

Sally Bowles is the dazzling centrepiece of Goodbye to Berlin, distilling Isherwood's genius into the tale of one baudy, brilliant woman. 
 
1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, poverty and excess. There, a lonely young Brit working on a novel is charmed by an English runaway and want-to-be star, the delightfully decadent Sally Bowles. The intimate, fleeting connection they form will stay with him for all his days. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.

Sally Bowles

Eileen Chang

From one of the greatest Chinese authors of the twentieth century, these delicate stories illuminate the most intimate matters of the human heart - now available in English for the very first time. 
 
Since childhood, Ruliang has had the peculiar habit of sketching a certain profile in the margins of his books. He has mapped out this same face, over and over again, without knowing why - until he meets Cythnia. As brief and evocative as sketches themselves, these five stories of lost loves, nostalgia and migration reveal a master of feeling at the peak of her powers. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Young at the Time

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The classic, moving tale of a man born old, destined to die young, and live at odds with his time 
 
Born in the body of a 70-year-old man, Benjamin Button is cursed to live life in reverse. As he ages backwards, he embraces life, finds love and seeks out adventure, all while getting younger and younger. But time, however skewered, waits for no man, and even youth waits to rob Benjamin Button of the one rare thing we all share: life. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Herman Melville

Herman Melville's enduringly comic and affecting tale of a man who takes quiet quitting to extreme limits 
 
A new office clerk in a Wall Street lawyer's office is the cause for quiet dismay when he refuses to do his job. But how to deal with Bartleby, The Scrivener, especially when he refuses to leave the office altogether.... 
 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Bartleby, The Scrivener

Margaret Atwood

This miniature array of perfect stories by the legendary Margaret Atwood flash before us the joys and despairs of mothers good and bad, evoking laughter, compassion and recognition in us all. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.

Significant Moments

Jacqueline Harpman

From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men comes a startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, each plumbing the depths of that most necessary human instinct: defiance. 
 
Wandering the forest in the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman and her fellow survivors are forbidden from leaving its boundaries or pausing in their march through its strange depths. 
 
As part of her rigid shcooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe – her punishment for doing so will be as disturbing as it is disproportiante. 
 
Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband’s desires, twice-weekly, as directed. She has not yet thought to pursue her own. 
 
In varying ways, and across varying worlds, each of these women are trapped. Do they have the will to escape? 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

We Were Forbidden

Jorge Luis Borges

A dazzling catalogue of beasts drawn from the dreamworlds of myth, folklore, and imagination 
 
From dragons and unicorns to beings born only in Borges's labyrinthine mind, this extraordinary compendium blurs the line between scholarship and fantasy. At once encyclopaedia and storybook, it reveals Borges's genius for turning knowledge into wonder. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Book of Imaginary Beings

Haruki Murakami

A nostalgic, jazz-soaked love-letter to a youth spent in pursuit of simple pleasures, from the Japan's most celebrated contemporary storyteller, Haruki Murakami 
 
Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, Pinball, 1973's narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J's Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier - the infamous three-flipper Spaceship. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Pinball, 1973

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

In these stories of rebellion and sacrifice, ordinary lives burn with extraordinary courage 
 
Drawn from Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's collection Secret Lives and Other Stories this new selection gathers his most powerful tales of struggle and resilience. From fighters taking up arms against colonial rule to martyrs confronting impossible choices, these stories testify to the cost of freedom and the endurance of the human spirit. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Fighters & Martyrs

Toni Cade Bambara

At once a gripping thriller and a heartbreaking elegy, this is Toni Cade Bambara's powerful final testament, a hymn to Atlanta's missing children. 
 
Zala Spencer is barely surviving on the margins of Atlanta's booming economy when she awakens one summer's morning in 1980 to find her teenage son, Sonny, has disappeared. Edited by Toni Morrison as part of Bambara's final novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child, this slim masterpiece leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

First Light

Louisa May Alcott

This is Alcott as you have never seen her before, sharp, gothic, and gloriously unsettling 
 
Jean Muir arrives at the wealthy Coventry household as a humble governess. But beneath her meek exterior lies a woman of steely ambition and dangerous cunning. What begins as a tale of domestic harmony turns swiftly into a drama of seduction, betrayal, and psychological gamesmanship. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Behind a Mask

Simone de Beauvoir

Two sisters must find their way in a world designed to confine them. 
 
Marcelle is the elder sister, a woman whose ambitions focus on becoming the companion of a 'man of genius'. Marguerite is the younger sister, a girl whose sanity depends on breaking free of the oppressive expectations of society. Both end up focusing their attentions on the same disappointing man. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Woman of Genius

Arthur Conan Doyle

When science crosses into the realm of desire, the result is terrifying... 
 
Gilroy, a respectable academic, falls under the sway of a female mesmerist who exerts a terrifying hold over his body and will. Doyle explores the dangers of science, desire, and domination in a chilling story of possession. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Parasite

biblio.categories.code

biblio.publicationStatus

biblio.brand

biblio.workEditions.format

biblio.ageRange

biblio.series.seriesName

biblio.imprint.description

biblio.type

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Search Results

Hunt the Villain

Wuthering Heights

White Nights

East of Eden

Reading lists

Where to start reading Salman Rushdie

Features

Reading guide: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

News

Salman Rushdie to publish memoir KNIFE

A guide to magical realism

7 summer must-haves for non-fiction readers from Vintage

Here, from Anita Desai to Salman Rushdie, are five books about families, India, marriage and the rest, to keep you going as the series moves on.

Books you'll love if you're enjoying A Suitable Boy

Uncategorized

Vintage books to gift this Father's Day

Vintage Children's Classics for kids and grown-ups

Image showing some of the best books of 2024, including Think Again, PATRIOT, The City and its Uncertain Walls and An African History of Africa

Must-read books of 2024: A look back at the year's most exciting releases

The 2025 Vintage Christmas Book Gift Guide 

A decorative banner featuring a portrait of Simon Prosser and a collage of images like a nuclear explosion and a graffiti peace sign

The Penguin books that shocked society

A quote from Albert Camus reading "All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football", in yellow and white letters against a green football pitch background.

11 literary quotes about the beautiful game

Books they tried to ban

An illustration of a semi-colon looking in the mirror, only to see other punctuation

Semi-colons; or, learning to love literature's most misunderstood punctuation

An image with a headshot of author Nazneen Ahmed Pathak. She is on top of a pink and yellow collage style background with bold typography that says '21 Questions'. There is an image of her book City of Stolen Magic, two snooker balls and a cue, and a yellow mug.

Interviews

'Children's literature can tell the most profound stories': 21 Questions with Nazneen Ahmed Pathak

Previous Booker Prize-winning books lined up on a shelf

18 Vintage books that have won the Booker Prize

Where to start reading Julian Barnes

The 1980s was a decade of massive social, political and cultural change. 

Books that shaped the 1980s

Flat lay of 9 Vintage Classics books about mothers and motherhood, against a white textile background.

Showing results for: ‘Salman-Rushdie’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter