Contemporary fiction titles are those which focus on the present or near past. Stories rooted in the current cultural, social, and political landscape which feature characters we can all recognise.
Contemporary Fiction Books
Penguin Books Ltd A Room with a View
Book SynopsisE.M. Forster''s beloved novel of forbidden love, culture clash, and the confines of Edwardian society Visiting Florence with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, lower-class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to the supercilious Cecil Vyse, but she finds herself increasingly torn between the expectations of the world in which she moves and the passionate yearnings of her heart. More than a love story, A Room with a View (1908) is a penetrating social comedy and a brilliant study of contrasts - in values, social class, and cultural perspectives - and the ingenuity of fate. In her illuminating introduction, Forster biographer Wendy Moffat delves into the little-known details of his life before and during the writing of A Room with a View, and explores the way the enigmatic author?s queer eye found comedy in the clash between English manners and the unsettling modern world, encouraging his reader to recognize and overcome their prejudice through humor. This edition also contains new suggestions for further reading by Moffat and explanatory notes by Malcolm Bradbury.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Collected Stories Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisA man at his desk is interrupted by the appearance of a woodland elf in his room; the piano maestro Bachmann ends his career; a barber shaves the face of a man who once tortured him; a shy dreamer makes a deal with the Devil. In these sixty-five stories of magic and melancholy, Nabokov displays an astonishing range of inventiveness, with dazzling sleight of hand, fantastical fairy tales, intellectual games and enchanting glimpses into lives of ambiguity and loss.The collection displays Nabokov''s astonishing range of technical and formal inventiveness: the dazzling sleight of hand, fanciful fairy tales, ingenious puzzles, enchanting vignettes and haunting melancholic narratives full of disturbing ambiguities.
£14.39
Penguin Books Ltd The Aleph
Book SynopsisBorges'' 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 themes: dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gaucho knife-fighters, transparent tigers and the elusive nature of identity itself.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd If Not Now When Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisPrimo Levi was among the greatest witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army. A compelling tale of action, resistance and epic adventure, it also reveals Levi''s characteristic compassion and deep insight into the moral dilemmas of total war. It ranks alongside THE PERIOD TABLE and IF THIS IS A MAN as one of the rare authentic masterpieces of our times.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Quartet Jean Rhys Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisJean Rhys''s first novel, a heartbreaking and disturbingly intimate portrayal of an isolated woman in ParisSet in a superficially romantic, between-wars Paris, Quartet is a poignant tale of a lonely woman. Set against a background of winter-wet streets, Pernod in smoky cafes and cheap hotel rooms with mauve- flowered wallpaper, Marya tries to make something substantial of her life in order to withstand the unreality of her surroundings. Alone, her Polish husband in prison, she is taken up by an English couple who slowly overwhelm her with their passions.Trade Review[Quartet] belongs to the new tradition in prose, which shuns elaboration for sharpness and intensity of effect * The New York Times *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Black Mischief Penguin Modern Classics
Book Synopsis''We are Progress and the New Age. Nothing can stand in our way.''When Oxford-educated Emperor Seth succeeds to the throne of the African state of Azania, he has a tough job on his hands. His subjects are ill-informed and unruly, and corruption, double-dealing and bloodshed are rife. However, with the aid if Minister of Modernization Basil Seal, Seth plans to introduce his people to the civilized ways of the west - but will it be as simple as that?
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Book SynopsisAn 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 might not be as random as they appear. Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all he can about the travellers. The five strangers were connected in some way, he thinks. There must be a purpose behind their deaths. But are their lost lives the result of sin? ... Or of love?Trade ReviewA glorious thing -- David Mitchell
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd Work Suspended and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThese pieces show the range of Waugh''s skills: Mr Loveday''s Little Outing; Cruise; Period Piece; On Guard; An Englishman''s Home; Excursion in Reality; Bella Fleace Gave a Party; Winner Takes All; Work Suspended; Scott-King''s Modern Europe; Basil Seal Rides Again; and Charles Ryder''s Schooldays.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Officers and Gentlemen Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisThe second volume of Waugh''s masterful trilogy, Sword of HonourGuy Crouchback is now attached to a commando unit undergoing training on the Hebridean isle of Mugg, where the whisky flows freely and HM forces have to show respect for the laird. But the comedy of Mugg is followed by the bitterness of Crete.Trade ReviewA maverick historian * The Atlantic *Waugh's unsparing bitterness is one of the things that makes his writing so good * Daily Mail *To know as Waugh knows that there are no more great journeys and possibly no more great vows and still to trouble to write a novel at all exhibits precisely that fine hardness of mind most characteristic of him -- Joan Didion
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Adventures of Augie March Penguin Modern
Book Synopsis''The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further'' Martin AmisA penniless and parentless Chicago boy growing up in the Great Depression, Augie March drifts through life latching on to a wild succession of occupations, including butler, thief, dog-washer, sailor and salesman. He is a ''born recruit'', easily influenced by others who try to mould his destiny. Not until he tangles with the glamorous Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, can he attempt to break free. A modern day everyman on an odyssey in search of reality and identity, Augie March is the star of star performer in a richly observed human variety show, a modern-day Columbus in search of reality and fulfilment.The Adventures of Augie March includes an introduction by Christopher Hitchens in Penguin Modern Classics.''Funny, poignant, crowded with carnivalesque types and yet narrated by a voice that is lonely and simple, it is Bellow''s fat comic maTrade ReviewAstonishingly and tremendously entertaining -- The New York TimesA rollicking, perplexing, astounding whopper of a picaresque novel * Chicago Sunday Times *Funny, poignant ... it is Bellow's fat comic masterpiece * Augie March *The great novel of the young person * Harper's *
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Dharma Bums
Book SynopsisA witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac''s The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas.Following the explosive energy of On the Road, the book that put the Beat Genration on the literary map - and Jack Kerouac on the bestseller list - comes The Dharma Bums, in which Kerouac charts the spiritual quest of a group of friends in search of Dharma, or Truth. Ray Smith and his friend Japhy, along with Morley the yodeller, head off into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude and experience the Zen way of life. But in wildly Bohemian San Francisco, with its poetry jam sessions, marathon drinking bouts and experiments in ''yabyum'', they find the ascetic route distinctly hard to follow.Jack Kerouac (1922-69) was an American novelist, poet, artist and part of the Beat Generation. His first published novel, The Town
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Subterraneans
Book Synopsis''The tender and achingly poetic account of a love affair'' Lester Bangs, Rolling StoneLeo Percepied, aspiring writer and self-styled freewheeling bum, gravitates to the subterraneans, impoverished intellectuals who haunt the bars of San Francisco. One of them is Mardou Fox, beautiful and a little crazy, whose dark eyes, full of suffering and sweetness, find recognition in Leo. But, afraid of his growing involvement, Leo sets out to destroy their love. Written in three days, The Subterraneans is, like all Kerouac''s work, closely related to his own life while encapsulating his great vision of America.
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd Lonesome Traveler
Book SynopsisA timeless travelogue from the leading light of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac''s Lonesome Traveller is a jubilant celebration of human discovery, published in Penguin Modern Classics.As he roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and London, Kerouac records, in prose of pure poetry, life on the road. Standing on the engine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus; witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium; catching up with the beat nightlife in New York; burying himself in the snow-capped mountains of north-west America; meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers; or falling in love with Montmartre and the huge white basilica of Sacré-Coeur - Kerouac reveals both the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfilment.''Piquant writing, the best part of its flavour being ... the hunt for the big experience, a touch of Hemingway and Whitman''Guardian''Full of startling and beaut
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Sword of Honour
Book SynopsisEvelyn Waugh''s masterful depiction of World War II, with an introduction by Martin StannardWaugh''s own unhappy experience of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during the war years 1939-45. High comedy - in the company of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook or the denizens of Bellamy''s Club - is only part of the shambles of Crouchback''s war. When action comes in Crete and in Yugoslavia, he discovers not heroism, but humanity. Sword of Honour combines three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender, which were originally published separately. Extensively revised by Waugh, they were published as the one-volume Sword of Honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished them to be read.''Marvellous ... one of the masterpieces of the century''John Banville, Irish Times
£14.24
Penguin Books Ltd A Kestrel for a Knave
Book SynopsisWith prose that is every bit as raw, intense and bitingly honest as the world it depicts, Barry Hines''s A Kestrel for a Knave contains a new afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life. Barry Hines''s acclaimed novel continues to reach new generations of teenagers and adults with its powerful story of survival in a tough, joyless world.Ken Loach''s renowned film adaptation, Kes, has achieved cult status. In his new afterword, Barry Hines discusses his work to adapt the novel into a screenplay and reappraises the legacy of a book that has become a popular classic.Barry Hines (b. 1939) was born in the mining village of Hoyland Common, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Leaving Ecclesfield Grammar School without any qualifications, Hines worked as an apprentice mining surveyor for the National Coal Board before entering Loughborough Training College to study Physical Education. Working as a teacher in Hoyland Common, he wrote novels in the school library after work, later turning to writing full-time.If you enjoyed A Kestrel for a Knave, you might like The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories by Jack London, published in Penguin Classics.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Mahabharata
Book SynopsisThe Mahabharata is some 3,500 years old and is the longest poem in any language. It is one of the founding epics of Indian culture and, with its mixture of cosmic drama and profound philosophy (one small section forms the BHAGHAVAD GITA) it holds aunique place in world literature. In this drastically shortened prose rendering, Narayan uses all his extraordinary talents to convey to a modern reader why this is such a great story. Filled with vivid characters, obsessed with the rise and fall of gods, empires and heroes, Narayan''s MAHABHARATA is an enormously enjoyable experience and the perfect introduction to the otherwise bewildering Indian cosmology.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Steinbeck J Red Pony
Book SynopsisJody Tiflin is given a red pony, and later he is promised the colt of a bay mare. Yet both of these gifts bring him tragedy as well as joy, and Jody is taught not only the harsh lessons of life and death, but made painfully aware of the fallibilty of adults.
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd The First Man
Book SynopsisThe unfinished manuscript of The First Man was discovered in the wreckage of car accident in which Camus died in 1960. Although it was not published for over thirty years, it was an instant bestseller when it finally appeared in 1994. The ''first man'' is Jacques Cormery, whose poverty-stricken childhood in Algiers is made bearable by his love for his silent and illiterate mother, and by the teacher who transforms his view of the world. The most autobiographical of Camus''s novels, it gives profound insights into his life and the powerful themes underlying his work.Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. The works that established his international reputation include THE PLAGUE, THE FALL, THE REBEL and THE OUTSIDER. Camus died in a road accident in 1960 and is remembered as one of the greatest philsophical novelists of the twentieth century.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Sweet Thursday
Book SynopsisIn Monterey, on the California Coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday - one of those days that''s just bad from the start. But Sweet Thursday is sunny and clear, a day when anything can happen. Returning to the scene of Cannery Row, Steinbeck brilliantly creates its bawdy, high-spirited world of bums, drunks and hookers, telling the story of what happened to everyone after the war. There are colourful characters old and new, all united by love, laughter and tears: Fauna, the latest madam at the Bear Flag brothel, Doc, still there for everyone else but feeling strangely sad himself, and Suzy, the new hustler in town who might just be the girl to save him.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Moon is Down
Book SynopsisOriginally published at the zenith of Nazi Germany''s power, The Moon Is Down explores the effects of invasion on both the conquered and the conquerors. Occupied by enemy troops, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. As he delves into the motivations and emotions of the enemy, Steinbeck uncovers profound and often unsettling truths both about war and human nature.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Last Tycoon
Book SynopsisUnfinished at the time of his death, F. Scott Fitzgerald''s The Last Tycoon is a story of doomed love set against the extravagance of America''s booming film industry. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Edmund Wilson.The studio lot looks like ''thirty acres of fairyland'' the night that a mysterious woman stands and smiles at Monroe Stahr, the last of the great Hollywood princes. Enchanted by one another, they begin a passionate but hopeless love affair, starting with a fast-moving seduction as slick as a scene from one of Stahr''s pictures. The romance unfolds, frame by frame, watched by Cecilia, a thoroughly modern girl who has taken her lessons in sentiment and cynicism from all the movies she has seen. Her buoyant humour and satirical eye perfectly complement Fitzgerald''s panorama of Hollywood at its most lavish and bewitching.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be the ''great American novel''. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed ''the first American Flapper'', and their traumatic marriage and Zelda''s gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night and, incomplete at the time of his death, The Last Tycoon. After his death The New York Times said of him that ''in fact and in the literary sense he created a generation ''.If you enjoyed The Last Tycoon, you might enjoy Fitzgerald''s The Beautiful and the Damned, also available in Penguin Classics.''Wonderful ... a novel about Hollywood, written from the inside''Helen Dunmore, Sunday Times
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Reprieve
Book SynopsisPhilosopher, novelist, playwright and polemicist, Jean-Paul Sartre is thought to have been the central figure in post-war European culture and political thinking. His most well-known works, all of which are published by Penguin, include THE AGE OF REASON, NAUSEA and IRON IN THE SOUL.
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd Winters Tales
Book SynopsisIf one theme unifies the 11 tales collected here, it is that of longing. Written after her return from Kenya and during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, they derive their themes and locales from Isak Dinesen''s childhood in Denmark. Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris and Rome, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce in 1921, she continued to run the plantation until a collapse in the coffee market forced her back to Denmark in 1931.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Book SynopsisSpurred on by admiration for his novelist half-brother and irritation at the biography written about him by Mr Goodman (''his slapdash and very misleading book''), the narrator, V, sets out to record Sebastian Knight''s life as he understands it. But buried amid the extensive quoting, digressions, seeming explanations and digs, Sebastian''s erratic and troubled persona remains as elusive as ever.Nabokov''s first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a nuanced, enigmatic potrayal of the conflict between the real and the unreal, and the futile quest for human truth.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Molesworth
Book SynopsisSchool is ''wet and weedy'', according to Nigel Molesworth, the ''goriller of 3B'', ''curse of St Custard''s'' and superb chronicler of fifties English life. Nothing escapes his disaffected eye and he has little time for such things as botany walks and cissy poetry with an assortment of swots, snekes and oiks. Instead he is very good at missing lessons, charming masters and putting down little brothers, in fact he is exceptional at most things except spelling. Wildly funny and full of sharp observations on life, the Molesworth tetralogy' is magnificently complemented by the illustrations of Ronald Searle
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd The Short Reign of Pippin IV
Book SynopsisSteinbeck''s only work of political satire turns the French Revolution on its head, as amateur astronomer Pippin Heristal is drafted in to rule the unruly French. Enchanting comedy ensues as Steinbeck creates the most hilarious royal court ever around the brief, bold reign of the corduroy-clad Pippin, his social-climbing wife Maria, his star-struck daughter Clotilde and her Californian beau, Todd.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd The Wayward Bus
Book SynopsisThe Wayward Bus travels through the backroads of the lush California countryside, transporting the lost and the lonely to new destinations. Juan Chicoy is at the wheel, a man of the land, hot-blooded and uninhibited. His passengers include Ernest, a travelling salesman out for fun, seventeen-year-old Kit, also known as Pimples, and Camille the stripper who dances at stag nights and takes the star-struck young Norma under her wing. This powerful and unsentimental novel becomes a story of crisis and passion, love and longing, as the travellers reveal their secrets and journey away from their pasts and towards, possibly, the promise of the future. The Wayward Bus, with its profound insight into human desires and failings, remains one of Steinbeck''s most powerful novels.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Selected Stories
Book SynopsisAlthough he is best known for his exquisite novels, E.M. Forster also wrote remarkable short stories. He referred to his stories as fantasies' and his attraction to myth and magic is apparent in many of them. Like his novels, the stories whether they are set in Italy, Greece, India, and other places Forster visited, or in England itself contrast the freedom of paganism with the restraints of English civilization, the personal, sensual delights of the body with the impersonal, inhibiting rules imposed by society. Rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises life holds, the stories often feature violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other disruptive happenings that throw the characters' perceptions and beliefs off balance. This volume includes all twelve stories published during Forster's lifetime.Table of ContentsIntroduction by David Leavitt and Mark MitchellSuggestions for Further ReadingA Note on the TextSELECTED STORIESThe Story of a PanicThe Other Side of the HedgeThe Celestial OmnibusOther KingdomThe Curate's FriendThe Road from ColonusThe Machine StopsThe Point of ItMr AndrewsCo-ordinationThe Story of the SirenThe Eternal MomentExplanatory Notes
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Zapata
Book SynopsisA new volume which includes the original screenplay, with its copious director''s notes, and the narrative - this has followed on from a previously undiscovered manuscript by Steinbeck being found in the UCLA Research Library - the narrative treatment of the story on which he based his screenplay.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd The Winter of Our Discontent
Book SynopsisEthan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan''s ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course, where all scruples are put aside. Steinbeck''s searing examination of the evil influences of money, immorality, greed and ambition on America drew acclaim from the Nobel Committee who hailed him as an ''independent expounder of the truth''.''Returns to the high standards of The Grapes of Wrath and to the social themes that made his early work ... so powerful''Saul Bellow, author of Herzog
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Iron in the Soul Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisJune 1940 was the summer of defeat for the French soldiers, deserted by their officers, utterly demoralized, awaiting the Armistice. Day by day, hour by hour, Iron in the Soul unfolds what men thought and felt and did as France fell. Men who shrugged, men who ran, men who fought and tragic men like Mathieu, who had dedicated his life to finding personal freedom, now overwhelmed by remorse and bitterness, who must learn to kill. Iron in the Soul, the third volume of Sartre''s Roads to Freedom Trilogy, is a harrowing depiction of war and what it means to lose.
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd Unconditional Surrender
Book SynopsisEvelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was born in London and educated at Oxford. He quickly established a reputation with such social satirical novels as DECLINE AND FALL, VILE BODIES and SCOOP. Waugh became a Catholic in 1930, and his later books display a more serious attitude, as seen in the religious theme of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, a nostalgic evocation of student days at Oxford. His diaries were published in 1976, and his letters in 1980.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Anthills of the Savannah Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisChris, Ikem and Beatrice are like-minded friends working under the military regime of His Excellency, the Sandhurst-educated President of Kangan. In the pressurized atmosphere of oppression and intimidation they are simply trying to live and love - and remain friends. But in a world where each day brings a new betrayal, hope is hard to cling on to. Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Achebe''s candid vision of contemporary African politics, is a powerful fusion of angry voices. It continues the journey that Achebe began with his earlier novels, tracing the history of modern Africa through colonialism and beyond, and is a work ultimately filled with hope.Trade Review"[The writer] in whose company the prison walls fell down' Nelson Mandela "The Founding Father of the African novel in English" - The Guardian
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Of Love and Hunger
Book SynopsisThe key literary figure in the pubs of post-war Fitzrovia, Maclaren-Ross pulled together his dispersed energies to write two great books: the posthumously published Memoirs of the Forties and this spectacular novel of the Depression, Of Love and Hunger - harsh, vivid, louche and slangy it deserves a permanent place alongside Coming Up for Air and Hangover Square.
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Book Synopsis''A wonderful book'' George OrwellRobert Tressell''s spirited attack on selfish capitalism is a masterpiece of wit and political passion and one of the most authentic novels of English working class life ever written. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists tells the story of a group of working men who are joined one day by Frank Owen, a journeyman-prophet with a vision of a just society. Indicting the ''philanthropy'' of the working class, who toil solely for the benefit of their masters, and initiating them into the secrets of the ''Great Money Trick'' which alienates them from their labour, Owen''s attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system rouse his fellow men from their political quietism. With an Introduction by Tristram Hunt''Some books seem to batter their way to immortality against all odds, by sheer brute artistic strength, and high up in this curious and honourable company must be counted The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell''s unfailing humour mixes with an unfailing rage and the two together make a truly Swiftian impact'' Evening Standard''A brilliant and very funny book'' Spectator''The first great English novel about the class war ... witty, humourous, instinctive and full of excitement, harmony and pathos'' Alan Sillitoe
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Sheltering Sky
Book Synopsis''The Sheltering Sky is a book about people on the edge of an alien space; somewhere where, curiously, they are never alone'' Michael Hoffman.Port and Kit Moresbury, a sophisticated American couple, are finding it more than a little difficult to live with each other. Endeavouring to escape this predicament, they set off for North Africa intending to travel through Algeria - uncertain of exactly where they are heading, but determined to leave the modern world behind. The results of this casually taken decision are both tragic and compelling.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Rabbit Run
Book SynopsisThe first book in his award-winning ''Rabbit'' series, John Updike''s Rabbit, Run contains an afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.It''s 1959 and Harry ''Rabbit'' Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, ''after you''ve been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate''.John Updike (1932-2009) was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Fortress Besieged Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisSet on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, Fortress Besieged recounts the exuberant misadventures of the hapless hero Fang Hung-chien, who after aimlessly studying in Europe at his family''s expense returns to Shanghai armed with a bogus degree from a fake university. On the liner back, Fang''s life becomes deeply entangled with those of two Chinese beauties - while when he does finally make it home, he obtains a teaching post at a newly established university, encounters effete pseudo-intellectuals, and falls into a marriage of disastrous proportions. A glorious tale of love, marriage, war, calamity, disillusionment and hope, this is one of the greatest Chinese novels: combining Eastern philosophy, Western traditions, adventure, tragicomedy and satire to create a unique feast of delights.
£11.39
Penguin Books Ltd My Oedipus Complex
Book SynopsisThe story of the title deals with a little boy named Larry and his feelings towards his father. When his father returns home from World War II, Larry is resentful and jealous of losing his mother''s undivided attention, and finds himself in a constant struggle to win back her affections.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd The Fall
Book SynopsisA philosophical novel described by fellow existentialist Sartre as ''perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood'' of his novels, Albert Camus'' The Fall is translated by Robin Buss in Penguin Modern Classics.Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights in an Amsterdam bar, he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and seemingly model citizen a compelling, self-loathing catalogue of guilt, hypocrisy and alienation pours forth. The Fall (1956) is a brilliant portrayal of a man who has glimpsed the hollowness of his existence. But beyond depicting one man''s disillusionment, Camus''s novel exposes the universal human condition and its absurdities - for our innocence that, once lost, can never be recaptured ...Albert Camus (1913-60) is the author of a number of best-selling and highly influential works, all of which are published by Penguin. They include The Fall, The Outsider and The First Man. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus is remembered as one of the few writers to have shaped the intellectual climate of post-war France, but beyond that, his fame has been international.If you enjoyed The Fall, you might like Jean-Paul Sartre''s Nausea, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''An irresistibly brilliant examination of modern conscience''The New York Times''Camus is the accused, his own prosecutor and advocate. The Fall might have been called The Last Judgement ''Olivier Todd
£9.25
Penguin Books Ltd A Death in the Family
Book SynopsisPublished in 1957, two years after its author''s death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident - a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Libra Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisAn unparalleled work of historical conjecture, ranging imaginatively over huge tracts of the American popular consciousness, Don DeLillo''s Libra contains an introduction by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald''s odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When history presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of JFK will galvanize the nation against Communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.Don DeLillo (b.1936) was born and raised in New York City. Americana (1971), his first novel, announced the arrival of a major literary talent, and the novels that followed confirmed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in late-twentieth-century Americ
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Americana
Book SynopsisHis first novel, Don DeLillo''s Americana passionately articulates the neurotic landscape of contemporary American life through a disintegrating embodiment of the American dream.Prosperous, good-looking and empty inside, 28-year-old advertising executive David Bell appears on the surface to have everything. But he is a man on the brink of losing his sanity. Trapped in a Manhattan office with soulless sycophants as his only company, he makes an abrupt decision to leave New York for America''s mid-west. His plan: to film the small-town lives of ordinary people and make contact with the true heart of his homeland. But as Bell puts his films together in his hotel room, he grows increasingly convinced that there is no heart to find. Modern America has become a land that has reached the end of its reel...Don DeLillo (b.1936) was born and raised in New York City. Americana (1971), his first novel, announced the arrival of a major literary talent, and the novels that followed confirmed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in late-twentieth-century American fiction. DeLillo''s comic gifts come to the fore in White Noise (1985), which won the National Book Award, Underworld (1997), hailed by Martin Amis as ''the ascension of a great writer'', Cosmopolis (2003), adapted into a film by David Cronenberg, due to be released later this year, and Falling Man (2007), a novel about the aftereffects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.If you enjoyed Americana, you might like DeLillo''s Libra, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''He''s a writer who, once you read him, makes you want to read everything he''s done''Martin Amis, Sunday Times''Witty, clever and incisive ... a marvellously realized plot''Time Out''Nearly every sentence of Americana rings true ... DeLillo is a man of frightening perception''Joyce Carol Oates
£9.99
Penguin Books Ltd Exile and the Kingdom Stories Penguin Modern
Book SynopsisThe stories of Exile and the Kingdom explore the dilemma of being an outsider - even in one''s own country - and of allegiance. With intense power and lyricism, Camus evokes beautiful but harsh landscapes, whether the shimmering deserts of his native Algeria or the wild, mysterious jungles of Brazil.Here a Frenchwoman is gradually seduced by the sheer difference of North Africa, a mutilated renegade is driven mad by the cruelty of his own people, and a barrel-maker watches the slow decline of his craft. A kindly teacher must choose between the law and a life, while a modest painter is out of his depth in the hypocrisy of the art world, and a French engineer discovers a new sense of belonging in a distant land.French novelist, essayist, and playwright. Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a representative of non-metropolitan French literature. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work.Carol Cosma
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Penguin Books Ltd Her Lover Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisHandsome, worldly and intelligent, Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations, he has become bitterly disillusioned by international affairs and the self-serving people who surround him. His one hope for redemption is through love - and he embarks on the audacious seduction of Ariane, the beautiful, daydreaming wife of a dull-witted, social-climbing employee of the League.In Her Lover, Albert Cohen created a world humming with the many vivid and eccentric voices of its wonderfully observed characters. Brilliantly inventive and baroquely detailed, this magnificent novel is a merciless satire of middle-class manners and ambitions, and of the Byzantine machinations of global politics.
£16.99
Penguin Books Ltd Moon Tiger
Book SynopsisPenelope Lively was born in Cairo in 1933. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her novels include Passing On, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave, and many are published by Penguin.Anthony Thwaite has published fourteen books of poems, including most recently A Move in the Weather (2003). He has taught in universities throughout the world, worked as a BBC radio producer, and is a former editor of The Listener and New Statesman. He is married to the biographer Ann Thwaite and in 1990 he received an OBE for services to poetry.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Guys and Dolls
Book SynopsisSlick, upbeat and funny, these stories inspired the popular musical and film Guys and Dolls.''Of all the high players this country ever sees, there is no doubt but that the guy they call the Sky is the highest.. He will bet all he has, and nobody can bet any more than this''.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Ballad of Peckham Rye
Book SynopsisA man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself.
£9.49
