Penguin Modern Classics

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 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....

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

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...

A defining collection from Alistair Cooke's legendary BBC Radio broadcasts guiding us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States When Alistair Cooke retired in February 2004...

In these groundbreaking studies, Sontag strips away the myths that surround the two most stigmatized diseases of our time Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor in 1978, while suffering from breast...

Three works of erotic prose fusing sex and spirituality, new to Penguin Modern Classics In these three works of erotic prose Georges Bataille fuses sex and spirituality in a highly...

The beautiful and moving follow-up to the acclaimed Cider with Rosie 'The stooping figure of my mother, waist-deep in the grass and caught there like a piece of sheep's wool,...

Maigret is called to investigate the stabbing of a young man When a tape recorder is found on a murder victim, Inspector Maigret hopes this will be the clue he...

Kafka's last great, unfinished novel - the book that hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who...

When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can...

The first novel by the great American novelist, now the subject of a major new film starring Jude Law Eugene Gant, born in 1900 to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial...

A richly compelling tale of folklore and witchcraft from this modern master, new to Penguin Modern Classics Jacob, a Jewish slave held in a mountain village after escaping a massacre...

The first part in a trilogy of novels, Cities of the Red Night satirizes modern society in a shocking story of sex, drugs, disease and adventure An opium addict is...

For Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris was based upon the rue de Fleurus and the Saturday evenings and 'it was like a kaleidoscope slowly...

Dark, dreamlike love stories with a twist from the author of There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby In these dark, dreamlike love stories with...

Paul Bowles's masterpiece explores the dangerous space between cultures, through the attempt of one young man to find his place in a fragmenting society Fez, 1954, and American ex-pat Stenham...

A foundational work of Black Radical critical theory, now to be widely available here for the first time Any struggle must be fought on a people's own terms, argues Cedric...

The gripping story of a husband's personal odyssey to find justice - adapted into an award-winning film in 2005 starring in Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz - and new to...

The final novel featuring Smiley, Le Carre's most enduring character, and a gripping feat of narrative brilliance The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training...

The first novel in the Bernard Samson series is a dazzling return to Deighton's world of Cold War espionage Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for...

The second book of the Hook, Line and Sinker series finds Bernard Samson on the run through Berlin, Vienna and Prague Bernard Samson is a spy on the run. But...

Bernard Samson gets caught up in the messy unravelling of the USSR in the second novel of the Faith, Hope, Charity trilogy Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the second...

New to Modern Classics Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a genius, the most brilliant musician the world will ever see. But the court of eighteenth-century Vienna doesn't recognize his talents -...

Considered a masterpiece of the genre, le Carre's preeminent spy novel is new to Penguin Modern Classics Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on- for...

Volume one of Javier Marias's acclaimed and evocative 'novel in parts' Recently divorced, Jacques Deza moves from Madrid to London to start anew. At a party held by retired don,...

A new translation of Calvino's influential last work Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his...

An enlightening anthology of George Orwell's journalism and non-fiction writing Famous for his novels and essays, Orwell remains one of our very best journalists and commentators. Confronting social, political and...

A new translation, part of the new Maigret series Maigret goes to the Belgian border to investigate the disappearance of a young woman.

'To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom' - Andre Gide Michel had been a blindfold scholar until,...

Available in English for the first time, The Chandelier is one of Lispector's most radical books and a key part of what made her a Brazilian legend 'She found the...

A hilarious, tragic novel about a would-be movie star in 1920s Berlin, from the author of Child of All Nations Doris is going to be a big star. Wearing 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...

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed it To the anger of her brothers, it is...

One of fifteen new translations of Freud's key writings, under the general editorship of celebrated psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, this project reimagines one the modern era's greatest writers These works were...

The second novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy is a gripping study in the art of spy enrolment World-weary agent Bernard Samson is losing control of his personal...

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...

The Bright Young Things of 1920s Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade, whether it...

A brilliantly atmospheric and gripping portrayal of the dark heart of a killer, new to Penguin Modern Classics At the Universal Advertising Agency on the Strand, London, a murder is...

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 jazz novel, a sermon and a song of praise to the richness of African-American experience From Ralph Ellison - author of the classic novel, Invisible Man - the long-awaited...

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 -...

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...

Author: Jack Kerouac Format: Paperback Number of Pages: 224 Kerouac's autobiographical account of his Beat years, new to Penguin Modern Classics Jack Kerouac called Doctor Sax, the enigmatic figure who...

First time in Modern Classics and for Penguin to publish one of the great American writers of the last 50 years Nedra and Viri are a married couple whose favoured...

Depicting a young woman's life in Nazi Germany, this is the masterpiece from the author of Child of All Nations Nineteen-year-old Sanna just wants to drink her beer in peace,...

A powerful, poignant novel about three half sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country With the Second World War only a few years in the...