Fiction

A brilliant hybrid of myth, history and fantasy from Sylvia Townsend Warner, one of the twentieth century's great novelists Don Juan, that notorious libertine, has disappeared. Has he been dragged...

A major rediscovered classic- a bittersweet, sweeping story of love, courage and resistance in wartime France A quiet village in Normandy, 1932. Ludo is ten years old and lives with...

Penelope Mortimer's classic novel about a woman falling apart in 1960s London, now a Radio 4 adaptation 'Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater Had a wife and couldn't keep her...' In this...

The sensational debut novel of one of the 20th century's greatest modernist writers Clarice Lispector's sensational, prize-winning debut novel Near to the Wild Heart was published when she was twenty-three...

Kawabata's serenely observed and enormously affecting portrait of old age Ogata Shingo is growing old, and his memory is failing him. At night he hears only the sound of death...

Translated by David McLintock and introduced by Hugh Haughton. An extraordinary collection of thematically linked essays, including THE UNCANNY, SCREEN MEMORIES and FAMILY ROMANCES. Leonardo da Vinci fascinated Freud primarily...

One of America's most influential and admired short story writers, new to Penguin Modern Classics From the gothic Old South to revolutionary Mexico, few writers have evoked such a multitude...

A new translation of this haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith Isolated lives and a lost world are evoked in these...

The final masterwork that was nearly destroyed, from one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century Dr Philip Wild, a man of brilliance, wit, fortune and tremendous bulk, is...

A masterpiece of American literature, Call It Sleep is a glorious ode to the migrant experience David Schearl arrives in America in his mother's arms. Waiting for them is a...

Spain's greatest and most well-loved modern poet, Lorca has long been admired for the emotional intensity and dark brilliance of his work, which drew on music, drama, mythology and the...

In The House of Bernarda Alba, a tyrannical matriarch rules over her house and five daughters, cruelly crushing their hopes and needs. The other plays here also portray female characters...

Set in the First World War, Journey's End concerns a group of British officers on the front line and opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a...

A new translation of this moving novel about the destructive power of greed, part of the Maigret series Poor Cecile! And yet she was still young. Maigret had seen her...

A darkly comic dystopian odyssey, from one of Russia's leading contemporary novelists Garin, a country doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is...

Bennett's remarkable 'sermon against parental tyranny' set in the industrial world of early twentieth century England Against the beautifully evoked backdrop of the Potteries district, the 'Five Towns'--a gossipy community...

A gripping new translation by David Bellos of the first novel which appeared in the famous Maigret series, revealing Simenon as a dark, visceral and surprising writer 'What he sought,...

Depicting the daily struggle of the individual against a tyrannical dictatorship, We the Living shows the terrible impact of a revolution on three people who demand the right to live...

New to Penguin Modern Classics on the 40th anniversary of first publication In The Empty Space, groundbreaking director Peter Brook draws on a life in love with the stage to...

A classic comic novel from one of Europe's finest writers 'I hate walking, he says, it seems so pointless to me. I walk, and while I am walking I keep...

Henry Miller's landmark travel book, ready to be stuffed into any backpack In 1939 Miller left Paris and headed out with his friend Lawrence Durrell to explore the Grecian countryside,...

Javier Marias's darkly humorous Oxford novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics The pretty young tutor Clare Bayes attracts many eyes at an Oxford college dinner, not least those of a...

In this second part of John Galworthy's trilogy of love, power, money and family feuding, a new generation has arrived to divide the Forsyte clan with society scandals and conflicting...

The Forsyte Saga is the first part of John Galsworthy's magnificent, well-loved Forsyte Chronicles, which trace the changing fortunes of the wealthy Forsyte dynasty through fifty years of material triumph...

A brilliant, yet brutal, portrait of a woman struggling to retrieve both life and love For six months, Julia has lived alone in a drab Parisian hotel on an allowance...

A comedy thriller about three New York con artists whose biggest heist goes awry The three confidence tricksters had a style that earned them millions. Silas was the leader, slick...

A devastating novel set in wartime Italy from the great twentieth-century writer, in a new translation by Tim Parks Shortlisted for The Society of Authors Translation Award 2022 June, 1943....

Introduction by author Tayeb Salih 'SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH-An Arabian Nights in reverse, enclosing a pithy moral about international misconceptions and delusions. The brilliant student of an earlier...

An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy. But one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths...

This new collection brings together First Love, The Calamative, The End and The Expelled; these four novellas are among the first major works of Beckett's decision to use French as...

A haunting, dreamlike portrayal of the encroaching horror of the Holocaust onto a genteel MittelEuropean resort town 'A masterpiece ... the greatest novel of the Holocaust' The Guardian Badenheim, a...

Ten tales of loss and longing, from one one Japan's greatest writers Bringing together Yukio Mishima's finest stories, this selection shows his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of...

A deliciously deranged thriller about supernatural vengeance and postwar guilt, by one of Austria's most celebrated writers Alexander Jessiersky, Austrian aristocrat and shipping magnate, finds the Nazis distasteful - but...

A stirring novel of idealist loyalty and sibling love, by one of East Germany's most important writers 1960. The border between East and West Germany has closed. For Elisabeth -...

A shimmering collection of stories from the author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated into English for the first time A newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella; a...

A private meeting, chance encounters and a mysterious tour of Lisbon, in this brilliant homage to Tabucchi's country, culture and people In the city of Lisbon, Requiem's narrator has an...

The novel Mishima considered to be one of his best works- a tale of family, nuclear war, love and UFOs The Osugi family have come to a realization. Each of...

A devastating critique of the systems of power and control inherent in civilisation, from one of the most radical thinkers of the twentieth century Society Must Be Defended is taken...

A compelling collection of new Kafka translations in a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition A brilliant new translation of Kafka's best-known work, published for the 125th anniversary of his birth This...

By the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Angle of Repose A novel of the friendships and woes of two couples, which tells the story of their lives in lyrical, evocative...

The most beautiful and powerful of Milosz's poems from across his writing life This selection brings together the most beautiful and powerful of Czeslaw Milosz's poems, spanning his writing life....

A sensational and mystical novel from one of the 20th century's greatest modernist writers A Breath of Life is Clarice Lispector's final novel, 'written in agony', which she did not...

Sontag achieved late bestselling success with this popular novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics A historical romance, Sontag's book is based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his wife,...

First time in Modern Classics Claudia Hampton, a beautiful, famous writer, lies dying in hospital. But, as the nurses tend to her with quiet condescension, she is plotting her greatest...

First ever publication of Capote's complete stories A complete collection of short fiction by one of the masters of twentieth-century American literature.

It is September 1938 and during a heatwave Europe tensely awaits the outcome of the Munich conference, where they will learn if there is to be a war. In Paris...

Borges' stories have a deceptively simple, almost laconic style. In maddeningly ingenious stories that play with the very form of the short story, Borges returns again and again to his...

'The latest Penguin Proust is a triumph, and will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world.' Sunday Telegraph Since the original, prewar translation there has been...