PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

F. Scott Fitzgerald

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

Born an old man, Benjamin Button lived a very curious life, backwards 
 
When Benjamin Button's father arrives at hospital he is surprised and ashamed to find his new baby boy is a weathered, aged man, for all appearances no younger than seventy years old. As time goes by, young Benjamin comes to no longer require a cane, his hair ceases to be grey, his limbs become less frail, his wrinkles less deep, but still the world around him fails to come to terms with his oddness, as he ages towards infancy and beyond ... 
 
This remarkable, imaginative tale is here accompanied by a story of the desperate measures required by limitless wealth, and another about the lengths (and cuts) a girl is willing to go to for popularity. 
 
Includes A Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Bernice Bobs Her Hair.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

And Two Other Stories

Evelyn Waugh

Composed between 1939-62, the late stories of Evelyn Waugh are in turn blackly comic and bitingly satirical. In 'The Sympathetic Passenger' a radio-loathing retiree picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker, while 'Charles Ryder's Schooldays' provides a hilarious and fragmentary insight into life before Brideshead. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.

Tactical Exercise & Other Late Stories

John Updike

Collected with a dozen wonderful stories, all set in classic Updike territory, the short novel 'RABBIT REMEMBERED' is a major work in its own right - a riveting return to Updike's most celebrated fictional world. Janice and Nelson Angstrom, plus several other survivors of the irreducible Rabbit, fitfully entertain his memory while pursuing their own happiness over the edge of the millennium, as a number of old strands come together in entirely unexpected ways.

Licks of Love

Short Stories And a Sequel, 'Rabbit Remembered'

Ronald Searle

Ronald Searle takes us back to the world of the Gothic Public School in The Terror of St Trinian's. In this gloriously anarchic academy for young ladies we witness shootings, knifings, torture and witchcraft, as well as many maidenly arts. The subject of many evergreen films, St Trinian's is synonymous with the sort of outrageous behaviour that would make a convict blench. This book also contains a selection of Ronald Searle's work from the non-school books, including The Rake's Progress, Souls in Torment and Merry England, etc. and their publication in one volumes stakes Searle's claim to be the greatest and most influential English satirist since the war.

The Terror of St Trinian's and Other Drawings

Franz Kafka

Drawing directly on original manuscripts, this collection comprises the major short stories published after Kafka&rsquo;s death. It includes The Great Wall of China, Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor, Investigations of a Dog and his great sequences of aphorisms, with fables and parables on subjects ranging from the legend of Prometheus to the Tower of Babel. Allegorical, disturbing and possessing a dream-like clarity, these writings are quintessential Kafka.

The Great Wall of China

Saul Bellow

'We were friends, somehow.But in the end, somehow, he intended to be a mortal enemy.All the while that he was making the gestures of a close and precious friend he was fattening my soul in a coop till it was ready for killing.' 
 
Vital, exuberant, streetwise and philosophizing, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow is one of the undisputed masters of American prose. In this inspired novella an ageing man writes an apology for his rudeness to a librarian thirty-five years earlier, unleashing a dazzling, rancorous comic riff on growing old, regret, rudeness, smoking and 'the world's grandeur'.

Him With His Foot in His Mouth

'The condemned man looked so doggishly submissive, it really seemed as if one might allow him to roam the slopes freely, and only needed to whistle when it was time for the execution, and he would come.' 
 
Kafka transformed the possibilities of the short story, his unique imagination giving his dark tales a sense of dream-like logic and unreality, in which their horrors are humorous and unease pervades. In these two stories, a traveller is shown the workings of an elaborate machine with a bloody purpose, and a son awakens unimagined resentments in his father. 
 
This book includes In the Penal Colony and The Judgement.

In the Penal Colony

George Orwell

This is the essential edition of the essential book of modern times, 1984, now annotated for students with an introduction by D. J. Taylor. 
 
Ever since its publication in 1948, George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian regime where Big Brother controls its citizens like 'a boot stamping on a human face' has become a touchstone for human freedom, and one of the most widely-read books in the world. In this new annotated edition Orwell's biographer D. J. Taylor elucidates the full meaning of this timeless satire, explaining contemporary references in the novel, placing it in the context of Orwell's life, elaborating on his extraordinary use of language and explaining the terms such as Newspeak, Doublethink and Room 101 that have become familiar phrases today.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Annotated Edition

Robert Musil

'They no longer hold themselves up with all their might, but sink a little and at that moment appear totally human' 
 
Of the very first rank of prose stylists, Robert Musil captures a scene's every telling detail and symbolic aspect with a precise and remarkable beauty. In these nine stories and essays, he considers holidaymakers and stone monuments, tales of war and blackbirds, and the great pathos of a tiny death: a fly's impossible fight against the grip of flypaper. 
 
This book includes Flypaper, Monkey Island, Fisherman on the Baltic, Sheep, As Seen in Another Light, Sarcophagus Cover, Monuments, The Paint Spreader, It's Lovely Here and The Blackbird.

Flypaper

Tove Ditlevsen

Tove is only twenty, but she's already famous, a published poet and wife of a much older literary editor. Her path in life seems set, but she has no idea of the struggles that lie ahead - love affairs, an unwanted pregnancy, physical pain and crippling opioid addiction. As the years go by, the central tension of Tove's life comes into painful focus: the terrible lure of dependency, in all its forms, and the possibility of living life freely and fearlessly - as an artist on her own terms. 
 
The final volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy and perhaps her masterpiece, Dependency is a dark and blisteringly honest account of addiction, and the way out.

Dependency

Italo Calvino

'The inspector ordered that the bird be searched.One of the agents stalled saying it made him feel sick, and after some fierce pecking another withdrew sucking a bleeding finger.' 
 
In these two stories from an inventive, comic master of the form, old friends and friendly rivals Pietro and Tommasso discover a treasure lost by the side of the road, and become suspected of a using a blameless chicken for devious ends. Italo Calvino's writing explores the fringes of these small, unusual scenes and finds incalculable wisdom and humour there. 
 
This book contains The Queen's Necklace and The Workshop Hen.

The Queen's Necklace

William S. Burroughs

This major collection of William Burroughs' letters gives an unprecedented insight into one of America's most incisive and influential writers, at a time when his work was at its most experimental and his life entered a new era of creativity. 
 
William Burroughs' life was often as extreme as his prose. This second volume of his letters documents the time after the notorious publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, as he drifted away from Kerouac, Ginsberg and the Beats and on towards new horizons in Europe and North Africa, moving from place to place in search of inspiration, or to avoid the law over his drug addiction and openly gay lifestyle. We see Brion Gysin gradually replace Ginsberg as Burroughs' most trusted confidant, as they explore ideas on mind control and language, and there is correspondence with Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, Timothy Leary and Norman Mailer, among many others. These letters show the creative surge that led to works such as the Nova Trilogy; Burroughs' brief fascination with Scientology; his desperation to kick his drug habit; his continuing dedication to the cut-up method, but also a gradual return to more narrative forms of writing as, in 1974, he prepared to return to New York. 
 
Darkly funny, sharply perceptive and often shocking, these letters also reveal an open and curious side to Burroughs, in contrast to the familiar view of his isolated, itinerant life at this time. Rub Out the Words adds a new richness to our view of one of the most innovative artists of the twentieth century.

Rub Out the Words

The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974

Robert Coover

'She arrives at 7.40, ten minutes late...' She babysits for Mr and Mrs Tucker. She has left a boyfriend alone for the evening. From this seemingly simple start Robert Coover masterfully explores the subtle barrier between 'reality' and thought. As the babysitter triggers the men's sexual fantasies, their erotic imaginations twist into alternative narratives simultaneously experienced by the reader: she does or does not take a bath; she does or does not invite her boyfriend over; she does or does not get caught unawares by Mr Tucker. In a profusion of happenings and imaginings, Coover layers moment upon moment, narrative upon narrative, to shatter the timeline of one evening into a multiplicity of events - contradictory, simultaneous, but all equally 'real'.

The Babysitter

Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov begins his Strong Opinions: 'I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.' In the interviews collected here - covering everything from his own burgeoning literary celebrity to Kubrick's Lolita to lepidoptery - he is never casual or off-guard. Instead he insisted on receiving questions in advance and always carefully composed his responses. 
 
Keen to dismiss those who fail to understand his work and happy to butcher those sacred cows of the literary canon he dislikes, Nabokov is much too entertaining to be infuriating, and these interviews, letters and articles are as engaging, challenging and caustic as anything he ever wrote. 
 
Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.

Strong Opinions

H. P. Lovecraft

'It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh (...)' 
 
H.P. Lovecraft was perhaps the greatest twentieth century practitioner of the horror story, introducing to the genre a new evil, monstrous, pervasive and unconquerable. At the heart of these three stories are terrors unthinkable and strange: a crash-landing meteorite, the wretched inhabitant of an ancient castle and a grave-robber's curse. 
 
This book includes The Colour Out Of Space, The Outsider and The Hound.

The Colour Out of Space

Saki

'Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new breakfast food, heralded under the resounding name of 'Filboid Studge'' 
 
H.H. Munro, better known by his pen name, Saki, wrote wickedly comic satires of upper-class Edwardian life. These seven short stories are macabre and extremely funny: they include a cat that is regrettably taught to speak, a vicious pet ferret worshipped as a god, a businessman triumphantly selling an unpalatable breakfast mush, and many dark twists and barbs. 
 
This book includes Filboid Studge, a Story of a Mouse That Helped, Todermory, Mrs. Packletide's Tiger, Sredni Vashtar, The Music on the Hill, The Recessional and The Cobweb.

Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse that Helped

Stefan Zweig

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Impatience of the Heart, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings. 
 
Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of the barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder that will destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.

Impatience of the Heart

Isak Dinesen

These five rich, witty and magical stories from the author of Out of Africa include one of her most well known tales, &lsquo;Babette&rsquo;s Feast&rsquo;, which was made into the classic film. It tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community, who treats her employers to the decadent feast of a lifetime. There is also a real-life Prospero and his Ariel in &lsquo;Tempests&rsquo;, a mysterious pearl-fisher in &lsquo;The Diver&rsquo; and a brief, tragic encounter in &lsquo;The Ring&rsquo;. All the stories have a mystic, fairy-tale quality, linked by themes of angels, the sea, dreams and fate. They were among the last to be written by Isak Dinesen, and show her as a master of short fiction.

Anecdotes of Destiny

Margaret Drabble

'Her feelings for the child redeemed her from bitterness, and shed some light on the dark industrial terraces and the waste lands of the city's rubble.' 
 
One of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation, Margaret Drabble is an unmatched observer of postwar English lives, portraying social change, sexual liberation, landscape, class and the messy complications of human relationships with intricacy and honesty. In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany. 
 
This book contains The Gifts of War and Hassan's Tower.

The Gifts of War

Paul Bowles

In the Circular Valley lives a spirit, a mute presence: Atlajala. Thirsting for sensation, this spirit enters a moth, a panther, an eel, and feels what they feel - the cool darkness of water, the pleasure of a kill. Centuries old and indifferent to time, it enters man and discovers obsession for the first time. Yearning to be incarnate as man, it enters priests, soldiers and bandits. When an adulterous couple arrives in the valley, it slips into a woman. Finally, it feels complete. But as it possesses her, she grows restless and extreme, and her affair takes a darker, more sinister turn.

The Circular Valley

'Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull'. With his senses wide open, Victor wanders the streets. He meets Nina. Again. For fifteen years, their fleeting, chance encounters have made Nina a faint but constant presence in the margins of his life. As they happen upon one another once again, his mind wanders back into the past and relives each brief memory: their kiss in Russia, when she met his wife, when he met her husband, their affair in Paris. Each time she captivated him, each time she seemed to almost forget him, each time he noticed a lurking sense of apprehension that began to grow.

Spring in Fialta

Percy Fitzpatrick

&lsquo;Hunting stories, like traveller&rsquo;s tales, are proverbially dangerous to reputations, however literally true they may be . . .&rsquo; So wrote J Percy FitzPatrick of his perennial best-seller, never out of print in the century since its first publication. Here is the story of the &lsquo;Boy&rsquo; who went to seek his fortune and of his bull-terrier, the plucky runt of the litter; of Marokela, the champion Zulu haulier; of Jantje, the Bushman with all his lore; and of pioneer types from previous goldrushes in California and Australia. A tribute to the life of the 1880s in the outposts of the agrarian Transvaal, this complete edition includes for the first time the author&rsquo;s &lsquo;Postscript&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Creed of Jock&rsquo;.

Jock of the Bushveld

Donald Barthelme

"I Bought a Little City [is] a take on the role that a writer has in writing a story - playing god, in a certain way." Donald Antrim, novelist. 
 'Got a little city, ain't it pretty'. 
 Galveston, Texas, has been bought. It suits its new owner just fine. So he starts to change it. He creates a new residential area in the shape of a Mona Lisa jigsaw puzzle, shoots six thousand dogs, and reminds those who complain that he controls the jail, the police and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. But, playing God has its limitations, which he soon discovers when he starts to covet Sam Hong's wife. With Donald Barthelme's unmistakeable ability to blend absurdity and the recognisable details of ordinary life, this is an uncanny tale about urban planning, capitalism and God.

I Bought a Little City

Tim Blanning

Once musicians such as Mozart were little more than court servants; now they are multimillionaire superstars wielding more power than politicians. How did this extraordinary change come about? 
 
Tim Blanning's brilliantly enjoyable book examines how everything from the cult of the romantic to technology and travel all fed the inexorable rise of music in the West, making it the most dominant and ubiquitous of the art forms. Encompassing balladeers, the great composers, jazz legends and rock gods, this is an enthralling story of power, patronage, creativity and genius.

The Triumph of Music

Composers, Musicians and Their Audiences, 1700 to the Present

6 of the Roaring Twenties chronicler&rsquo;s most scintillating short stories, chosen from Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). This inexpensive volume comprises &quot;The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,&quot; &quot;The Ice Palace,&quot; &quot;Bernice Bobs Her Hair,&quot; &quot;May Day,&quot; &quot;The Jelly-Bean,&quot; and &quot;The Offshore Pirate.&quot;

The Diamond As Big As the Ritz And Other Stories

The Diamond As Big As the Ritz; Bernice Bobs Her Hair; the Ice Palace; May Day; the Bowl

William Trevor

"It's like gadgets in shops.You buy a gadget and you develop an affection for it... but all of a sudden there are newer and better gadgets in the shops.More up-to-date models." 
 
William Trevor has been acclaimed as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language, likened to Chekhov for his insights into human nature. These three tales of obsession, heartbreak, silent sorrow and the small tragedies of ordinary lives are profound, immaculate and beautiful. 
 
This book includes The Mark-2 Wife, The Time of Year and Cheating at Canasta.

The Mark-2 Wife

'And then one day a solitary figure appeared, moving toward them across the lifeless plain from the west.One man on a camel... ' 
 
Paul Bowles's unforgettable short stories portray people facing hostile environments and the innate savagery of humanity. These three unbearably tense tales from sun-drenched and brutal climes tell of vengeance, abandonment, violence and cruelty enjoyed and suffered, in a surreal realm of horror. 
 
This book includes The Delicate Prey, A Distant Episode and The Circular Ruins.

The Delicate Prey

Life in Tove's neighbourhood in Copenhagen is confusing and difficult: her father can't find work, her mother is angry and remote, and Tove herself sometimes thinks she's been exchanged at birth. But 'inside of me long, mysterious words began to crawl across my soul' and she soon realizes that she has a vocation, something unknowable and secret within, and that if she can only find the right words, she will one day succeed in forging a true life of her own - somewhere beyond the narrow streets of her childhood. 
 
The first volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy, Childhood captures the triumphs and tragedies of girlhood with intense vividness and a poet's clarity of vision.

Childhood

Albert Camus

Stuart Gilbert

Caligula reveals some aspects of the existential notion of 'the absurd' by portraying an emperor so mighty and so desperate in his search for freedom that he inevitably destroys gods, men and himself. The dramatic impetus of Cross Purpose, however, comes from the tension between consent to and refusal of man's absurdity; it is the tragedy of a man who returns home to his mother and sister without revealing his identity to them. By the time of The Just and The Possessed, refusal and rebellion have taken over, and in these overtly political plays (the latter based on Dostoyevsky's The Devils) Camus dramatizes action and revolt in the name of liberty. 
 
Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His play, Caligula, appeared in 1939. His first two important books, L'Etranger (The Outsider) and the long essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), were published when he returned to Paris. After the war he devoted himself to writing and established an international reputation with such books as La Peste (The Plague 1947), Les Justes (The Just 1949) and La Chute (The Fall; 1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was killed in a road accident in 1960.

Caligula and Other Plays

Raymond Chandler

'I pushed her back into the house without saying anything, shut the door. We stood looking at each other inside. She dropped her hand slowly and tried to smile. Then all expression went out of her white face and it looked as intelligent as the bottom of a shoe box...I lit my cigarette, puffed it slowly for a moment and then asked: "What are you doing here?" 
 
Before creating Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler perfected the hardboiled private detective story in the pages of Blask Mask magazine - tough, spare tales of gumshoes and murder, laced with a weary lyricism and deadpan, laconic wit. 'Killer in the Rain' is vintage Chandler, the groundwork for his classic first novel The Big Sleep.

Showing results for: ‘Len Deighton’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter