Penguin Modern Classics
1281 books in this series
Father and Son
At birth Edmund Gosse was dedicated to 'the Service of the Lord'. His parents were Plymouth Brethren. After his mother's death Gosse was brought up in stifling isolation by his father, a marine biologist whose faith overcame his reason when confronted by Darwin's theory of evolution. Father and Son is also the record of Gosse's struggle to 'fashion his inner life for himself' - a record of whose full and subversive implications the author was unaware, as Peter Abbs notes in his Introduction. First published anonymously in 1907, Father and Son was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.
Tales of the Pacific
If you know London primarily through novels like WHITE FANG, these stories will provide a new perspective. Full of intriguing characters and snippets of pidgin, they also highlight London's concern with social issues.
Cynics
'A love that cannot be throttled by the rubber tube of an enema bulb is immortal.'
Bookish and idealistic Vladimir is tormented with love for Olga; he brings her flowers when other men bring her flour and millet. Olga eventually agrees to marry him, as her building’s central heating will be out of service all winter and at least with two in the bed they’ll be warmer. When she decides she’d like to serve the revolution, he introduces her to his brother Sergei, a Bolshevik who manages the waterways. Thus begins an excruciating love triangle, measured in ration coupons and black market goods.
Described by the poet Joseph Brodsky as 'one of the most innovative novels in Russian literature', Marienhof’s Cynics is a pitch-black comedy set during the wild and savage years of War Communism and the New Economic Policy. Cinematic in its style and collagist in its aesthetic, it establishes Marienhof as a true formal radical. It is a bawdy, savage, lavishly emotional portrayal of working for the revolution (and trying to ignore it).
Bookish and idealistic Vladimir is tormented with love for Olga; he brings her flowers when other men bring her flour and millet. Olga eventually agrees to marry him, as her building’s central heating will be out of service all winter and at least with two in the bed they’ll be warmer. When she decides she’d like to serve the revolution, he introduces her to his brother Sergei, a Bolshevik who manages the waterways. Thus begins an excruciating love triangle, measured in ration coupons and black market goods.
Described by the poet Joseph Brodsky as 'one of the most innovative novels in Russian literature', Marienhof’s Cynics is a pitch-black comedy set during the wild and savage years of War Communism and the New Economic Policy. Cinematic in its style and collagist in its aesthetic, it establishes Marienhof as a true formal radical. It is a bawdy, savage, lavishly emotional portrayal of working for the revolution (and trying to ignore it).
Coal
‘I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.’
Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection faithfully captures the complex interiority of the self. With insight and great feeling, these poems explore racial and sexual politics, liberation and love; they are strongly autobiographical (including poems about Lorde’s children, her sister and her parents, as well as an elegy for a dear childhood friend). These timeless poems resonate down the years.
now take my word for jewel in the open light.’
Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection faithfully captures the complex interiority of the self. With insight and great feeling, these poems explore racial and sexual politics, liberation and love; they are strongly autobiographical (including poems about Lorde’s children, her sister and her parents, as well as an elegy for a dear childhood friend). These timeless poems resonate down the years.
Twilight in Musashino
Musashino, 1959. A young Japanese flight attendant is found strangled on the icy banks of the river. The police suspect foul play – but the deeper they dig, the more they collide with a wall of silence.
At the centre of it all stands a foreign priest and the Guglielmo Church, a charitable Christian mission. The dead woman’s connection to the church is undeniable. But what begins as a routine investigation quickly turns into something far more treacherous, entangling together narcotics, post-war relief schemes and the delicate web of international diplomacy.
As the story moves from back alleys to diplomatic sanctuaries, following the twists and turns of Detective Fujisawa's investigation, Seicho Matsumoto masterfully constructs a slow-burning procedural where truth is clear but justice is not permitted.Translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood.
The Issa Valley
'Thomas was born in the village of Gine at that time of year when a ripe apple thumps to the ground during an afternoon lull.' So a boy's life begins in a winding river valley on the Polish-Russian border where time is measured by seasonal rhythms and ancient songs. For Thomas, the ghosts in the forest are as real as the magical water-snakes that live in the Issa; in the village he is entranced by the women with their cinched waists and the men in their long boots. But when he is shown a map, he discovers a kingdom all his own and starts to dream of leaving the valley behind.
Letter to My Judge
My dear Judge, I would like one man, just one, to understand me. And I really hope that man can be you.
In a small town in western France, Dr Charles Alavoine seems to lead the perfect life: his own medical practice, two beautiful children, a new wife and a doting mother. Yet as each quiet day of bourgeois conformity passes, Alavoine begins to feel a sharp sense of futility and solitude. Then, one rainy day in December, he meets a mysterious young woman on a station platform. Fascinated by her innocence and the scars of her past, Alavoine’s passion soon gives way to obsession, as he is drawn deeper into a web of desire and deceit, ending in a terrible act that will forever change the course of his life.
First published in 1947, Letter to My Judge is a masterful exploration of the darkest corners of the human soul, and a harrowing exorcism of Simenon’s phantoms.
In a small town in western France, Dr Charles Alavoine seems to lead the perfect life: his own medical practice, two beautiful children, a new wife and a doting mother. Yet as each quiet day of bourgeois conformity passes, Alavoine begins to feel a sharp sense of futility and solitude. Then, one rainy day in December, he meets a mysterious young woman on a station platform. Fascinated by her innocence and the scars of her past, Alavoine’s passion soon gives way to obsession, as he is drawn deeper into a web of desire and deceit, ending in a terrible act that will forever change the course of his life.
First published in 1947, Letter to My Judge is a masterful exploration of the darkest corners of the human soul, and a harrowing exorcism of Simenon’s phantoms.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
'American political life … has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds'
How can a country be captured by rumours, surreal conspiracy theories and the most brazen of conmen? The historian Richard Hofstadter asked these questions in the 1960s, amid fears of rising extremism in America. Yet his dazzling dissection of the paranoid worldview – a brew of overheated exaggeration, suspicion and perceived victimhood, which can derail entire nations – is a lesson for the ages in the seductive politics of the irrational.
In an era where we feel assailed by endless paranoid public statements, Hofstadter’s discussion of famous and obscure untruths, some of which have profoundly impacted American domestic and foreign policy, provide the antidote for the present day.
Exiles
After ten long years spent away from Dublin, Richard, Bertha and their young illegitimate son Archie are back home. Despite expectations of comfort and domesticity, the couple's return to the place where they first met triggers an existential questioning, an anxiousness which is exacerbated by meetings with old friends and lovers.
James Joyce's only surviving play, Exiles builds upon one of his most famous short stories, 'The Dead', to provide a profound exploration of jealousy, doubt and the complexity of human desire.
James Joyce's only surviving play, Exiles builds upon one of his most famous short stories, 'The Dead', to provide a profound exploration of jealousy, doubt and the complexity of human desire.
Poems
It is only James Joyce's towering genius as a novelist that has led to his comparative neglect as a poet. And yet his poems not only occupy a pivotal position in Joyce's career, they are also magnificently assured achievements in their own right. 'Chamber Music' is an extraordinary début, fusing a broad swathe of styles with characteristically sharp irony and joyful verbal exuberance. 'Pomes Penyeach' confronts painful personal issues of adultery, jealousy and betrayal and so paves the way for the more detached and fully realized treatment of these feelings in Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses. Also included here is 'Ecce Puer', written for his new-born grandson, as well as juvenilia, satires, translations, limericks and a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Letters
‘Good night, mon chéri. May tomorrow come quickly, and all the other days when you will belong more to me than to that damned play. I kiss you with all my might.’ —Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, June 1944
The affair between Albert Camus and Maria Casarès began in wartime, on 6 June 1944. Casarès was starring in a production of Camus’ play The Misunderstanding, and at an after-party hosted by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, the actress and Nobel Prize-winning author embarked on a love affair that would unfold in hundreds of vivid and moving letters over 15 years.
Translated into English for the first time, these 865 letters reveal the impassioned heights and depths of Casarès and Camus’ relationship. They wax lyrical, they rage, they traverse Parisian streets and gaze upon the Luberon mountains, they discuss stardom and everyday life. Letters: 1944-1959 draws back the curtain on the intimate personal lives of two extraordinary artists, who wrote persistently and copiously to one another until Camus’ fatal car crash in January 1960.
The affair between Albert Camus and Maria Casarès began in wartime, on 6 June 1944. Casarès was starring in a production of Camus’ play The Misunderstanding, and at an after-party hosted by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, the actress and Nobel Prize-winning author embarked on a love affair that would unfold in hundreds of vivid and moving letters over 15 years.
Translated into English for the first time, these 865 letters reveal the impassioned heights and depths of Casarès and Camus’ relationship. They wax lyrical, they rage, they traverse Parisian streets and gaze upon the Luberon mountains, they discuss stardom and everyday life. Letters: 1944-1959 draws back the curtain on the intimate personal lives of two extraordinary artists, who wrote persistently and copiously to one another until Camus’ fatal car crash in January 1960.
Kalpa Imperial
In city squares and golden palaces, a series of storytellers recount the history of the greatest Empire that never was: a history in which orphans rise from the underworld to the throne, mad emperors raze cities, captive dancers induce fatal delirium and murderous empresses plot against their own children.
Angélica Gorodischer’s novel, masterfully translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, conjures a vivid fictional universe of labyrinthine cities, desert caravans and the lawless South – and of an Empire fated to rise, fall and rise again.
Angélica Gorodischer’s novel, masterfully translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, conjures a vivid fictional universe of labyrinthine cities, desert caravans and the lawless South – and of an Empire fated to rise, fall and rise again.
Trafalgar
Part pulp adventure, part otherworldly meditation, this is the story of Trafalgar Medrano: intergalactic trader and lover of bitter coffee and black cigarettes. In the bars and cafés of Rosario, Argentina, he recounts tall tales of his space escapades - involving, among other things, time travel and dancing troglodytes.
Cosmopolitan, philosophical and, above all else, pure fun, Angélica Gorodischer's Trafalgar is a unique blend of science fiction, magical realism and shaggy-dog tale from one of Argentina's most distinctive writers.
Cosmopolitan, philosophical and, above all else, pure fun, Angélica Gorodischer's Trafalgar is a unique blend of science fiction, magical realism and shaggy-dog tale from one of Argentina's most distinctive writers.