Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction
Penguin Books Ltd The Betrayal A touching historical novel from the
Book Synopsis**FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017**''Scrupulous, pitch-perfect. With heart-pounding force, Dunmore builds up a double narrative of suspense'' Sunday TimesLeningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young hospital doctor and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the post-war, post-siege wreckage. But their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin''s merciless Ministry for State security. So when Andrei is asked to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, he and Anna are fearful. Trapped in an impossible, maybe unwinnable game, can they avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves?The Betrayal is a powerful and touching novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and a moving portrait of a love that will not be extinguished. ''Beautifully Trade ReviewEnthralling. Emotionally gripping ... ordinary people struggling against a city's beautiful indifference, and clinging on for dear life Daily Telegraph Beautifully crafted, gripping, moving, enlightening. Sure to be one of the best historical novels of the year Time Out Scrupulous, pitch-perfect. With heart-pounding force, Dunmore builds up a double narrative of suspense Sunday Times Magnificent, brave, tender ... with a unique gift for immersing the reader in the taste, smell and fear of a story Independent on Sunday A masterpiece. An extraordinarily powerful evocation of a time of unimaginable fear. We defy you to read it without a pounding heart and a lump in your throat Grazia A beautifully written and deeply moving story about fear, loss, love and honesty amid the demented lies of Stalin's last days. I literally could not put it down -- Antony Beevor Dunmore chillingly evokes the atmosphere of Soviet suspicion, where whispered rumours and petty grievances metastasise into lies and denunciation. A gripping read Daily Mail Meticulous, clever, eloquent. An absorbing and thoughtful tale of good people in hard times Guardian A remarkably feeling, nuanced novel that satisfies the head as well as the heart. This does not read like a retelling of history, but like a draught of real life. With her seemingly small canvas, Dunmore has created a universe Sunday Herald Dunmore's genius lies in her ability to convey the strange Soviet atmosphere of these very Soviet stories using the most subtle of clues Spectator Storytelling on a grand scale The Times
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The New Confessions
Book Synopsis''Brilliant. A Citizen Kane of a novel'' Daily Telegraph__________________________________Meet John James Todd:Scotsman, auteur, Rousseau-fanatic - and ''subversive element''Born in 1899, John James Todd is one of the great, failed geniuses of the last century. His reminiscences, collected in The New Confessions, take us from Edinburgh to the Western Front, the Berlin film-world in the Twenties to Hollywood in the Thirties, Forties and beyond. Suffering imprisonment, shooting, marriage, fatherhood, divorce and McCarthyism, Todd is a hostage to good fortune, ill-judgement, bad luck, the vast sweep of history and the cruel, cruel hand of fate . . .__________________________________''A magnificent feat of storytelling and panoramic reconstruction'' Observer''Paced and plotted with sinewy, unfailing skill . . . Boyd has given us a work of rich, ripe and immensely enj
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Plague
Book Synopsis'On the morning of April 16, Dr Rieux emerged from his consulting-room and came across a dead rat in the middle of the landing.' It starts with the rats. Vomiting blood, they die in their hundreds, then in their thousands. When the rats are all gone, the citizens begin to fall sick. Like the rats, they too die in ever greater numbers.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd 20th Century Dream Story
Book SynopsisThis wonderful translation of Dream Story will allow a fresh generation of readers to enjoy this beautiful, heartless and baffling novella. Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife ware driven apart into rival worlds of erotic revenge.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Dubliners
Book SynopsisJames Joyce (1882-1941) was born and educated in Dublin. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Penguin
Book SynopsisPlayful and experimental, James Joyce''s autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a vivid portrayal of emotional and intellectual development. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Seamus Deane.The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus''s Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist''s ''eternal imagination''. Both an insight into Joyce''s life and childhood, and a unique work of modernist fiction, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to fully come into themselves.James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Pa
£8.99
Penguin Books Ltd Ulysses James Joyce Penguin Modern Classics
Book Synopsis''Everybody knows now that Ulysses is the greatest novel of the century'' Anthony Burgess, ObserverFollowing the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action, and even been deemed blasphemous, but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce''s belief that literature ''is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man''.''The most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape'' T. S. Eliot''Intoxicating ... a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare'' Guardian
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Seize the Day
Book SynopsisFading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain, successful father, failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as ''the type that loses the girl'') and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious, philosophizing con man grants him a glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding, and offers him one last hope ...Trade ReviewA profoundly true image of human existence . . . This is the intense world of the ordinary, about to burst forth into the radiance of consciousness * The New York Times *What makes all of this so remarkable is not merely Bellow's eye and ear for vital detail. Nor is it his talent for exposing the innards of character in a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It is Bellow's vision, his uncanny ability to seize the moment and to see beyond it * Chicago Times *A small masterpiece...I enjoy Saul Bellow in his spreading carnivals and wonder at his energy -- V.S. PritchettBellow's pre-eminence rests not on sales figures and honorary degrees, not on rosettes and sashes, but on incontestable legitimacy. To hold otherwise is to waste your breath. Bellow sees more than we see - sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches... Bellow will emerge as the supreme American novelist. The only American who gives Bellow any serious trouble is Henry James -- Martin AmisSaul Bellow was a brilliant man, a master of English prose and supreme chronicler of modernity and its torments. -- Ian McEwanIt is the special distinction of Mr. Bellow as a novelist that he is able to give us, step by step, the world we really live each day -- and in the same movement to show us that the real suffering of not understanding, the deprivation of light. It is this double gift that explains the unusual contribution he is making to our fiction * The New York Times *Saul Bellow was the American writer supreme . . . our most exuberant and melodious postwar novelist -- John Updike
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd The Plague
Book SynopsisThe townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. This title tells the story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Nabokov V Invitation to a Beheading
Book SynopsisWritten in Berlin in 1934, Invitation to a Beheading contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as ''a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ... The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ... But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair''.
£9.49
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 Glory Penguin Modern Classics
Book Synopsis''In general Glory is my happiest thing.'' ''The fun of Glory is . . . to be sought in the echoing and linking of minor events, in back-and-forth switches, which produce an illusion of impetus; in an old daydream directly becoming the blessing of the ball hugged to one''s chest, or in the casual vision of Martin''s mother grieving beyond the time-frame of the novel in an abstraction of the future that the reader can only guess at, even after he has raced through the last seven chapters where a regular madness of structural twists and a masquerade of all characters culminate in a furious finale, although nothing much happens at the very end - just a bird perching on a wicket in the greyness of a wet day'' - Vladimir Nabokov
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Dangling Man
Book SynopsisExpecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Dangling Man is his journal, a wonderful account of his restless wanderings through Chicago''s streets, his musings on the past, his psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him, and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd More Die of Heartbreak Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisKenneth Trachtenberg has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described ''plant visionary.'' While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from ''bliss to breakdown.'' Imagining that a settled existence will end his anguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood of new torments.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Mr. Sammlers Planet
Book SynopsisMr Artur Sammler, intellectual and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a registrar of madness, a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future. His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking deep into the sufferings of the human soul.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd The Victim Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisLeventhal is a natural victim; a man uncertain of himself, never free from the nagging suspicion that the other guy may be right. So when he meets a down-at-heel stranger in the park one day and finds himself being accused of ruining the man''s life, he half believes it. He can''t shake the man loose, can''t stop himself becoming trapped in a mire of self doubt, can''t help becoming ... a victim.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Actual Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisThe story behind The Actual belongs to Harry Trellman, an aging, astute businessman who has never belonged anywhere.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Deans December
Book SynopsisDean Corde is a man of position and authority at a Chicago university. He accompanies his wife to Bucharest where her mother, a celebrated figure, lies dying in a state hospital. As he tries to help her grapple with an unfeeling bureaucracy, news filters through to him of mounting problems left behind in Chicago. Corde is troubled: at home the centre is not holding firm, in Eastern Europe authority is cruel and dehumanizing.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd After the Fall
Book SynopsisQuentin is a successful lawyer in New York, but inside his head he is struggling with his own sense of guilt and the shadows of his past relationships. One of these an ill-fated marriage to the charming and beautiful Maggie, who went from operating a switchboard to become a self-destructive star - a singer everyone wanted a piece of. With tremendous psychological acuity and depth, and a brilliant, dreamlike structure, After the Fall is a literary masterpiece, drawing on Miller''s own life - the story of a man striving to comprehend his feelings for his friends, family and the women he has loved.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Incident at Vichy Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisIn Vichy France, 1942, a group of men sit outside an office, waiting to be interviewed. The reason they have been pulled off the street and taken there is obvious enough. They are, for the most part, Jews. But how serious an offence this is, and how they are to suffer for it, is not clear, and they hope for the best. But as rumours pass between them of trains full of people locked from the outside and furnaces in Poland, and although they reassure themselves that nothing so monstrous could be true, their panic rises.Arthur Miller''s claustrophobic play of how the inconceivable becomes allowed to pass, Incident at Vichy is one of the most indispensable, moving pieces of art about the Holocaust.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Original of Laura
Book SynopsisThe Original of Laura is Vladimir Nabokov''s final, incredible unfinished novel in fragments. Dr Philip Wild, a man of brilliance, wit, fortune and tremendous bulk, is used to suffering humiliations at the hands of his wife, the younger, slender, and rudely promiscuous Flora. But in a novel, a ''maddening masterpiece'' documenting her infidelities, written by one of her lovers and given to the doctor, she appears as My Laura. Dishonoured, Wild still finds pleasure in life, by indulging in self-annihilation, beginning with the removal of his toes.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Steppenwolf
Book SynopsisA modernist work of profound wisdom that continues to enthral readers with its subtle blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Hermann Hesse''s Steppenwolf is revised by Walter Sorell from the original translation by Basil Creighton.At first sight Harry Haller seems a respectable, educated man. In reality he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters - accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe and the bewitching Hermione - the misanthropic Haller discovers a higher truth, and the possibility of happiness. This blistering portrayal of a man who feels himself to be half-human and half-wolf was the bible of the 1960s counterculture, capturing the mood of a disaffected generation, and remains a haunting story of estrangement and redemption.Herman Hesse (1877 - 1962) suffered from depression and weathered series of personal crises which led him to undergo psychoanalysis with J. B. Lang; a process which resulted in Demian (1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing world of sensual experience. This dichotomy is prominent in Hesse''s subsequent novels, including Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) and his magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game (1943). Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.If you enjoyed Steppenwolf, you might like Hesse''s Siddhartha, also available in Penguin Classics.''A savage indictment of bourgeois society ... the gripping and fascinating story of disease in a man''s soul''The New York TimesTrade ReviewThe gripping and fascinating story of disease in a man's soul * The New York Times *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Ulysses. Annotated Students Edition
Book SynopsisAn undisputed modernist classic, "Ulysses'" ceaseless verbal inventiveness and astonishing wide-ranging allusions confirms its standing as an imperishable monument to the human condition. This title states that "Ulysses" is 'an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies.Trade ReviewEverybody knows now that Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century -- Anthony Burgess
£22.80
Penguin Books Ltd Look at the Harlequins Penguin Modern Classics
Book Synopsis''He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language'' Anthony Burgess''Look at the harlequins ... Play! Invent the world! Invent reality''. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre ''numerical nimbus syndrome''.Trade Review'He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language'
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Tristram Shandy
Book SynopsisThe Penguin English Library Edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne''I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done ...''Laurence Sterne''s great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate ''hero'' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Hour of the Star
Book SynopsisLiving in the slums of Rio and eking out a living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola and her philandering rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly and unloved. Yet telling her story is the narrator Rodrigo S.M., who tries to direct Macabéa''s fate but comes to realize that, for all her outward misery, she is inwardly free. Slyly subverting ideas of poverty, identity, love and the art of writing itself, Clarice Lispector''s audacious last novel is a haunting portrayal of innocence in a bad world.Trade ReviewHer last and perhaps greatest novel -- Barbara Mujica * Americas *Her finest book * The Nation *Her searing last novel ... mesmerizing * Vogue *
£7.59
Penguin Books Ltd The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Book SynopsisEndlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatched in its absurd and timeless witLaurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations. The text and notes of this volume are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, with a critical introduction by Melvyn New and Christopher Ricks's introductory essay from the first Penguin Classics edition. For more than sev
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITHKatherine Mansfield''s clear, sparkling and perceptive short stories revolutionized the genre, and this collection represents the whole range of her writing. Moving, resonant, full of light and colour, they range from short sharp studies to longer, richer tales, encompassing her three major volumes Bliss, The Garden Party and In a German Pension, and fifteen tantalizing fragments of unfinished stories published after her tragic death, including ''Honesty'', an intriguing tale of two bachelors, and ''The Doves'' Nest'', an exquisite story of a widowed mother and her daughter in the Riviera who receive a mysterious gentleman caller. Graceful, delicate and quietly devastating, they observe apparently trivial incidents to create sensitive, often painful revelations of her characters'' inner lives.
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Book SynopsisFor the centennial of its original publication, a beautiful Deluxe Edition of one of Joyce’s greatest works—featuring a foreword by Karl Ove Knausgaard, author the New York Times bestselling six-volume autobiographical novel My Struggle, which has been likened to a 21st-century Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The first, shortest, and most approachable of James Joyce’s novels, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays the Dublin upbringing of Stephen Dedalus, from his youthful days at Clongowes Wood College to his radical questioning of all convention. In doing so, it provides an oblique self-portrait of the young Joyce himself. At its center lie questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive in style, the novel subtly and beautifully orchestrates the patterns of quotation and repetition instrumental inTrade ReviewOne believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction. -- H. G. Wells[Mr. Joyce is] concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its myriad message through the brain, he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, though it be probability or coherence or any other of the handrails to which we cling for support when we set our imaginations free. -- Virginia Woolf[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will] remain a permanent part of English literature. -- Ezra Pound
£13.49
Penguin Putnam Inc The Year of the Hare
Book Synopsis
£14.40
Penguin Putnam Inc Adèle
Book Synopsis
£13.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Jillian
Book SynopsisThe sublimely awkward and hilarious (Chicago Tribune), National Book Award 5 Under 35-garnering first novel from the acclaimed author of The New Me--now in a new editionTwenty-four-year-old Megan may have her whole life ahead of her, but it already feels like a dead end, thanks to her dreadful job as a gastroenterologist''s receptionist and her heart-clogging resentment of the success and happiness of everyone around her. But no one stokes Megan''s bitterness quite like her coworker, Jillian, a grotesquely optimistic, thirty-five-year-old single mother whose chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles. Megan and Jillian''s lives become increasingly precarious as their faulty coping mechanisms--denial, self-help books, alcohol, religion, prescription painkillers, obsessive criticism, alienated boyfriends, and, in Jillian''s case, the misguided purchase of a dog--send them spiraling toward their downfalls. Wickedly authentic and brutally funny, Jillian is a subversive portrait of two women trapped in cycles of self-delusion and self-destruction, each more like the other than they would care to admit.
£16.00
Penguin Books Ltd Blind Owl
Book SynopsisA new English translation of one of the most important, controversial Iranian novels of the twentieth centuryWinner of the 2023 Lois Roth Persian Translation Award A Penguin ClassicWritten by one of the greatest Iranian writers of the twentieth century, Blind Owl tells a two-part story of an isolated narrator with a fragile relationship with time and reality. In first person, the narrator offers a string of hazy, dreamlike recollections fueled by opium and alcohol. He spends time painting the exact same scene on the covers of pen cases: an old man wearing a cape and turban sitting under a cypress tree, separated by a small stream from a beautiful woman in black who offers him a water lily. In a one-page transition, the reader finds the narrator covered in blood and waiting for the police to arrest him. In part two, readers glimpse the grim realities that unlock the mysteries of the first part. In a new translation that reflects Hedayat’s converTrade Review“a much-needed and clear translation”—Amir-Hussein Radjy, The New York Times“The eerie, phantasmal Blind Owl…possesses the fully dimensional oddness of a vivid dream, which one can mine for interpretations, analyze for influences or simply submit to.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
£11.04
Penguin Books Ltd To the Lighthouse Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
Book SynopsisA must-have new edition of Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece, featuring a cover illustrated by Alison Bechdel, the New York Times bestselling author of Fun Home, and a new foreword by Patricia LockwoodA Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe EditionEvery summer, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children vacation on Scotland’s idyllic Isle of Skye, surrounded by artist friends. They expect these summers will go on forever, but with the arrival of World War I, they are forced to reckon with change, loss, and time’s unstoppable march, before making, years later, the long-awaited return to Skye and to its towering lighthouse. An intimate, impressionistic meditation on memory, grief, the brutalities of war, and the tensions of domestic life, revolutionary for its use of stream of consciousness and shifting points of view, and infused with a singular poetic essence, To the Lighthouse is both a landmark in modernist writing and one of the gTrade Review“I put off To the Lighthouse for a long time, in order to live in delicious anticipation of it. . . . Yet this pleasure can be drawn out for only so long; if you are a reader, the morning comes when you must greet it along with the sun. . . . There is never the sense, opening To the Lighthouse, that it could have been anything else. It opens with the weather, just like the real day. It rises to some occasion, wakes with the lark to meet the weekend―moves ‘with an indescribable air of expectation,’ because it is going to meet someone around the corner, and with the shock of encounter you sometimes feel in reading, you find that it is you.” ―Patricia Lockwood, from the Foreword “I reread this book every once in a while, and every time I do I find it more capacious and startling. It’s so revolutionary and so exquisitely wrought that it keeps evolving on its own somehow, as if it’s alive.” —Alison Bechdel “I know of no more gut-wrenching, soaring prose about shared consciousness, mortality and water. Truly a book for the cradle to the grave.” —Maggie Nelson “This novel is just astonishing in its depth and reach and beauty. There is really nothing else like it, and no matter how many times I read it I find myself shocked at what Woolf was able to do.” —Meg Wolitzer “A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again.” —Greta Gerwig “My admiration for this book is complete. It is as beautiful, poignant, and ruthless as anything I have ever read.” —Siri Hustvedt “Woolf’s groundbreaking novel is still one of the best available accounts of self-mythologizing middle-class family life and its oppressive construction of male and female identity.” —Rachel Cusk “One of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time.” —Margaret Drabble “Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love. If you’re like me you’ll come back to this book often, always astounded, always moved, always refreshed.” —Rick Moody “She was doing with language something like what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar.” —Michael Cunningham “Radiant . . . I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.” —Eudora Welty “Thrillingly introspective.” —The Independent “At the head of all Virginia Woolf’s work.” —The New York Times
£12.59
Random House USA Inc The Guest
Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this “spellbinding” (Vogue), “smoldering” (The Washington Post) novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls. “Under Cline’s command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force.”—The New York TimesA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Slate, Chicago Public Library, Electric Lit“Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could suc
£30.00
Vintage Publishing A Fans Notes
Book Synopsis''Listen, you son of a bitch, life isn''t all a goddam football game! You won''t always get the girl! Life is rejection and pain and loss...''A Fan''s Notes - the horrible and hilarious account of a long failure. Our narrator is the ultimate unreconstructed male. His primary concerns are alcohol, sex and the New York Giants. But things go very wrong for him - he drinks too much, he''s impotent and the Giants start to loose. And so we follow his boozy trail through two failed marriages, many bars and intermittent visits to Avalon Valley - a private home for the mentally ill. Shockingly politically incorrect, terribly self-indulgent but more than redeemed by its unremitting honesty and insight this is the unforgettable story of a man laid bare.Trade ReviewA Fan's Notes is one man's life written with brilliance and insight. No one should have had Exley's life, and no one who has read it can forget it -- James DickeyWriters of every kind of aesthetic and cultural persuasion talk about it and press it on their friends. When I urge it on a friend who asks what it is about or what it is like, I say read it, just read it -- Geoffrey WolffAstonishing... It is visceral and intimate. Self-absorbed, it is also searingly perceptive about what happens between fathers and sons, men and women * Independent *
£10.44
Vintage Publishing Eustace
Book SynopsisPoor Eustace is not very well. Convalescing in bed, his world is confined to the four walls of his grand and gloomy room. His days are spent in wild imaginings, punctuated by the occasional visit from his mother and a legion of Aunties, who fuss and smother Eustace.But then his wicked uncle arrives in a cloud of pipe smoke, accompanied by a swelling cast of prostitutes, hoodlums, drunkards and assorted hangers-on. Suddenly Eustace finds himself transformed from invalid to the star of a glittering and decadent social scene, serving drinks and holding court from his enormous bed. That is, until his Uncle''s past begins to catch up with him...Eustace is blackly comic, surreal and exquisitely rendered. It marks the debut of a brilliant new graphic novelist.Trade ReviewA strong debut with a compelling style... One of the particular joys reading comics offers is the chance of synchronicity between artistic style and thematic elements, and Harris offers that in abundance. -- Alex Hern * New Statesman *Surreal and enjoyable. -- James Smart * Guardian *Shades of Tim Burton and Edward Gorey twine tantalisingly about Eustace, the blackly comic debut by Londoner S. J. Harris. Harris’ angular stylistics and feathered pencil work is outstanding. -- Larushka Ivan-Zadeh * Metro *There’s a sniff of the great Robert Aickman in the mix of brittle comedy with murky sexual threat, and the whole thing is beautifully conceived and illustrated. Disturbingly confident, too, in its refusal to quite make sense. -- Tim Martin * Daily Telegraph *The darkness in Eustace creeps up on you unexpectedly. * The Skinny *
£13.49
Vintage Publishing Wild Houses
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSublime… Wild Houses is a thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve read in any recent debut and characters who held me captive until the very last page * Sunday Times *A delicate and beautiful book about the lives of lonely people... Page after faultless page, Wild Houses is a sheer joy to read... Colin Barrett's the real deal, but then we knew that already * Irish Times *So consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison * Guardian, *Book of the Day* *With a thrillerish intensity… Barrett expertly handles the combination of narrative-driving dialogue, exhilarating action scenes and quieter moments designed to build tension… I was unable to put Wild Houses down * Times Literary Supplement *After years of short stories, Barrett’s transition to the longer span of the novel is confidently done. Descriptive set pieces are linked and expanded, yet every paragraph is created with care * Financial Times *Barrett’s superb debut novel deepens the world of his two short-story collections… The novel has the tension of a gritty noir thriller and the comic menace of a Pinter play * New Statesman *Barrett can sustain a narrative across a novel without sacrificing the panache and precision that has made him one of the most stylish fiction writers at work today. His prose is a delight from the first page * i *Wild Houses realises life in full and without pity... A palpable sense of human eccentricity, and endurance, is always there, just beneath the surface * Daily Telegraph *Until now, Colin Barrett has made his name as an artist of the short story… Wild Houses is a delight, with a wider space for his talent to spread and for his acutely observed characters to linger * Spectator *This strange and beautiful novel brings to life an entire world. Wild Houses is a book not just to read but to live inside -- Sally Rooney, author of Normal People
£12.59
Penguin Books Ltd A Hologram for the King
Book SynopsisNew from Dave Eggers, National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King.In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter''s college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy''s gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and a moving story of how we got here.Praise for A Hologram for the King: ''Absorbing . . . modest and equally satisfying: the writing of a comic but deeply affecting tale about one man''s travails that also provides a bright, digital snapshot of our times'' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times''A fascinating novel'' New Yorker''A spare but moving elegy for the American century'' Publishers Weekly''Eggers understands the pressures of American downward-mobility, and in the protagonist of his novel, Alan Clay, has created an Everyman, a post-modern Willy Loman . . . The novel operates on a grand and global scale, but it also is intimate'' Chicago Tribune''Completely engrossing'' Fortune''Eggers can do fiction as well as he likes'' Los Angeles TimesDave Eggers is the author of six previous books: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, How We Are Hungry, You Shall Know Our Velocity, What is the What, The Wild Things and Zeitoun. Zeitoun was the winner of the American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and What is the What was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and won France''s Prix Médicis. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney''s, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. A native of Chicago, he lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.Trade ReviewA fascinating novel * New Yorker *A spare but moving elegy for the American century * Publishers Weekly *Completely engrossing * Fortune *Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. [Hologram] is a strike against the current state of global economic in justice -- Elissa Schappell * Vanityfair.com *
£13.85
Penguin Books Ltd Anything is Possible
Book SynopsisONE OF BARACK OBAMA''S BEST BOOKS OF 2017From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling and Booker long-listed author of My Name is Lucy Barton Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Anything is Possible tells the story of the inhabitants of rural, dusty Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, a successful New York writer who finally returns, after seventeen years of absence, to visit the siblings she left behind.Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout''s place as one of America''s most respected and cherished authors.Lucy''s story continues in Oh William! and Lucy by the Sea, available to read now!***''A terrific writer'' Zadie Smith''A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own'' Hilary MantelElizabeth Strout''s new novel Tell Me Everything is out now!Trade ReviewIt's hard to believe that a year after the astonishing My Name Is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout could bring us another book that is by every measure its equal, but what Strout proves to us again and again is that where she's concerned, anything is possible. This book, this writer, are magnificent. -- Ann Patchett, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 'Commonwealth'This is a shimmering masterpiece of a book...Strout is a brilliant chronicler of the ambiguity and delicacy of the human condition. Anything is Possible is a wise, stunning novel * Observer *The words appear on the page as if breathed there * Sunday Telegraph *Anything is Possible is wonderfully readable because Strout really can write you into a world until you feel you are there with her, in that house, that life, that little Podunk of a place * The Times *Strout's compassion for her fellow creatures, as these anguished, lean stories prove, is as keen as a whip and all the more painful for it * Guardian *The work of Elizabeth Strout suggests that she pays a similar quality of unseparate attention to life, which she - not passively, but actively - takes in, listening to, looking into it, reflecting up on and freeing it once more, remade, in beautifully placed words, onto the page to live again for us, her fortunate readers * Daily Telegraph *Anything is Possible is absolutely wonderful. Here is a writer at the peak of her powers: compassionate, profoundly observant, laser-cut diamond brilliant * Literary Review *Anything Is Possible confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers * Boston Globe *There is immense humanity in Strout's writing....her masterful economy of prose creates a rich tapestry infused with emotional wisdom...Anything is Possible is a masterpiece * Sunday Express *A quietly gripping deception of some of the ordinary, messy, interwoven lives that Lucy and her mother discussed in the earlier book * Radio Times *Strout, always good, just keeps getting better * Vogue US *In her latest work, Strout achieves new levels of masterful storytelling. * Publisher's Weekly *[F]ull of searing insight into the darkest corners of the human spirit... 'Anything Is Possible' is both sweeping in scope and incredibly introspective. That delicate balance is what makes its content so sharp and compulsively readable... With assuredness, compassion and utmost grace, her words and characters remind us that in life anything is actually possible * San Francisco Chronicle *The epic scope within seemingly modest confines recalls Strout's Pulitzer Prize winner, Olive Kitteridge, and her ability to discern vulnerabilities buried beneath bad behavior is as acute as ever. Another powerful examination of painfully human ambiguities and ambivalences-this gifted writer just keeps getting better. * Kirkus Reviews *If you miss the charmingly eccentric and completely relatable characters from Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout's best-selling My Name is Lucy Barton, you'll be happily reunited with them in Strout's smart and soulful Anything is Possible * Elle US *Strout once again shows her talent for adroitly uncovering what makes ordinary people tick * Booklist *Strout pierces the inner worlds of these characters' most private behaviors, illuminating the emotional conflicts and pure joy of being human, of finding oneself in the search for the American dream * Nylon *Amgash, Illinois, will be familiar to Elizabeth Strout fans as the hometown of the protagonist of her 2016 novel, My Name is Lucy Barton. In Anything is Possible... Lucy's legend looms large... but no prior reading is required to enjoy Strout's powerful writing and empathy * Real Simple *We devoured Strout's last novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and her latest-which is loosely linked to Lucy Barton-is no different. Told from multiple points of view, it's about residents of a small town in Illinois struggling with the most relatable and quotidian problems... you'll swear you know these characters. (In fact, it reminds us a bit of another of Strout's masterpieces, the excellent Olive Kitteridge.) * PureWow *Elizabeth Strout's prose is like words doing jazz -- Rachel JoyceI am deeply impressed. Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening, from a perfect attunement to the human condition, from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue. -- Hilary Mantel on 'My Name is Lucy Barton'A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships -- Observer on 'My Name is Lucy Barton'Tender, elegiac, this is the story of a single life that also manages to tell the story of many -- Independent on 'My Name is Lucy Barton'The writing is wrenchingly lovely. It almost always is with Strout, whether she's knitting metaphors or summarizing, with agonizing economy, whole episodes. * New York Times *There are not many novelists out there producing writing as good as this * Daily Mail *Down to every sentence, it's wise, touching and quietly powerful * Grazia *As always, Strout treats even the most difficult characters with rare understanding. "It made me feel much less alone," says on reader of Lucy's memoir. The same will surely be said of Anything Is Possible * People (Book of the Week) *Gorgeous... Strout is in that special company of writers like Richard Ford, Stewart O'Nan and Richard Russo, who write simply about ordinary lives and, in so doing, make us readers see the beauty of both their worn and rough surfaces and what lies beneath -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR / Fresh AirHighly enjoyable * Sunday Times *A subtle, disturbing and touching book that is a miracle of wisdom and perception * Mail on Sunday *A beautifully told story of small-town Americans dealing with big life issues * Good Housekeeping *Utterly beautiful in the way that these characters were flawed to their core yet brimful of keeping it together no matter what...I loved it, there wasn't a moment when I didn't believe it. -- Barb Jungr * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *In all her novels, including this one, "the kindness of strangers is a fierce sun than can pierce the cloud" * The Week *Every chapter has depth, nuances, restrained descriptions and luminous characterisation. A wonder of a book * i Newspaper *Elizabeth Strout is a novelist in whose hands anything really is possible, and if you've yet to discover her, make this holiday the one you do * Daily Mail *This glimmering, profound, beautiful novel is modern American writing at its best' -- Clare AllfreeJust as understated and as full of horrifyingly elisions and surprising epiphanies as its predecessor * TLS Books of the Year *This audacious novel is about small-town characters struggling to make sense of past family traumas * New York Times Books of the Year *Strout turns her clear, incisive gaze on the intricacies and betrayals of small town life -- Maggie O'FarrellAnything is Possible is predictably great because it's written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable - because it is written by Elizabeth Strout -- Roddy Doyle
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Chess
Book Synopsis''... a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!''A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger in the crowd - a man who will risk everything to win. Stefan Zweig''s acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of obsession and the price of genius.Trade ReviewA brilliant writer * New York Times *One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories -- Edmund de WaalStefan Zweig was a late and magnificent bloom from the hothouse of fin de siecle Vienna * The Wall Street Journal *Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by 'one of the masters' I mean that he's up there with Maupassant, Chekhov, James, Poe, or indeed anyone you care to name -- Nick Lezard * Guardian *A new favourite writer of mine -- Wes AndersonPerhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game -- EconomistHis great achievement in short form * The Times *
£7.59
Penguin Books Ltd A Perfect Spy
Book Synopsis''The best English novel since the war'' Philip RothMagnus Pym - ranking diplomat, consummate Englishman, loving husband, secret agent - has vanished. Has he defected? Gone to ground? As the hunt for Pym intensifies, the secrets of his life are revealed: the people he has loved and betrayed, the unreliable con-man father who made him, the two mentors who moulded and shaped him, and now wish to claim this perfect spy as their own. Described by le Carré as his most autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy is a devastating portrayal of a man who has played different roles for so long, he no longer knows who he is. ''Le Carré understood that espionage is an extreme version of the human comedy, even the human tragedy. A Perfect Spy will very likely remain his greatest book'' New YorkerTrade ReviewOne of the finest English novels of the twentieth century -- Philip Pullman
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Mrs Dalloway
Book Synopsis''She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day''On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Here, Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel''s lyricism and accessibility have made it one of her most popular works.The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers'' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.Trade ReviewOne of the few genuine innovations in the history of the novel—New YorkerOne of her greatest achievements, a book whose afterlife continues to inspire new generations of writers and readers—Guardian
£7.59
Penguin Books Ltd The Awakening
Book Synopsis''The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude''When ''The Awakening'' was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author''s reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin''s great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who - with tragic consequences - refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers'' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.
£7.59
Penguin Books Ltd The Lady and the Little Fox Fur
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLeduc's short book is magnificently disproportionate to its length. A moving, beautiful and authentic classic. We must be grateful to the Penguin European Writers series, a precious venture in these dark times, for bringing it back to us. -- John BanvilleA forceful affirmation of the human spirit * Guardian *Violette Leduc's novels are works of genius and also a bit peculiar -- Deborah Levy, from the introductionShe can capture the smells of a country childhood, dazzle with the lights of the Place de la Concorde or make you feel the silky slither of her eel-grey suit * Observer *This book is as richly humane as anything else you're likely to read * Independent *What is important about Violette Leduc is the extraordinary perfection she brings to experience and the exquisite skill she uses to describe it * Daily Mail *The great French feminist writer we need to remember * Guardian *A vastly under-read author -- Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Lispector C Chandelier
Book SynopsisClarice Lispector''s masterly second novel, now available in English for the first time''She found the best clay that one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold ... She would get a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world''Like the clay from which she sculpts figurines as a girl, Virginia is constantly shifting and changing. From her dreamlike childhood on Quiet Farm with her adored brother Daniel, through an adulthood where the past continues to pull her back and shape her, she moves through life, grasping for the truth of existence. Illuminating Virginia''s progress through intense flashes of image, sensation and perception, The Chandelier, Lispector''s landmark second novel, is a disorienting and exhilarating portrait of one woman''s inner life. ''Utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing'' Colm TóibínTranslated by Benjamin Moser and Magdalena EdwardsTrade ReviewProlific and peerless ... a Brazilian national treasure ... Clarice sought a knowledge beyond knowledge, a wisdom that left wisdom behind ... through her texts emerges the struggle of life: how to live each day, what the painful process of loving is, why one should pick up a pen and respond to indignity in the first place -- Carlos Valladares * Gagosian Quarterly *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Apple in the Dark
Book SynopsisDescribed by Clarice Lispector as ''the best one'', this intoxicating portrayal of a man searching for his destiny is her mystical, enigmatic masterpiece''All I''ve got is hunger. And that instable way of grasping an apple in the dark-without letting it fall''Martim, believing that he has committed a murder, flees the city and escapes into the night. Wandering through the vastness of nature he arrives, in a state of fear and wonder, at a remote ranch run by two women. There Martim finds work and, as he labours in the blistering heat of the Brazilian summer, becomes transfigured; remade into something else entirely.Translated by Benjamin Moser ''The most important Brazilian woman writer of the twentieth century... The richness of The Apple in the Dark defies the explanatory power of any single interpretation'' TLSTrade ReviewLispector is the premier Latin American woman prose writer of this century * The New York Times Book Review *Clarice Lispector left behind an astounding body of work that has no real corollary inside literature or outside it -- Rachel Kushner * Bookforum *Brilliant and unclassifiable: glamorous, cultured, moody, Lispector is an emblematic twentieth-century artist who belongs in the same pantheon as Kafka and Joyce -- Edmund WhiteOne of the true originals of Latin American literature -- Terrence Rafferty * The New York Times Book Review *A genius on the level of Nabokov -- Jeff VanderMeer * Slate *Sphinx, sorceress, sacred monster. The revival of the hypnotic Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the twenty-first century -- Parul Seghal * The New York Times *
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Mrs Dalloway
Book Synopsis''One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century'' Michael CunninghamClarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Smith''s day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax. Virginia Woolf''s masterly novel, in which she perfected the interior monologue, brings past, present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923.Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Elaine Showalter.Trade ReviewOne of the few genuine innovations in the history of the novel * New Yorker *One of her greatest achievements, a book whose afterlife continues to inspire new generations of writers and readers * Guardian *
£7.59
