'I knew he was imagining a really lovely girl - all curves, curls, heart and hidden claws'
In stories that span the course of a lifetime - from childhood in the Caribbean to adolescent modelling i
'If he only knew what it was, he would fix it; he would kill this mean thing that made Mama feel so bad.'
Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories from the the aut
'I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided . . .'
By turns comical, grouchy and exalted, and including his tragic masterpiece 'The Great Hunger', some of the key poem
'It was what we call in the trade a potato...'
Tales of low-lifes and grifters trying to make ends meet in pre-War Germany.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of
'For once there had been false idols and asses' heads drawn on the walls...'
Sleepers awake in a remote cave and the ancient mystic Simon Magus attempts a miracle, in these two magical, otherworld
'There is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain'
A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Se
'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'
This landmark missive from one of the greatest activists in history calls for direct, non-violent resistance in the fight against racism, an
Pip switches identities, sexes and centuries in this punk, fairytale reimagining of Charles Dickens's original Great Expectations. Both familiar and unfamiliar, our orphaned narrator is transplanted
His hand sought the adjacent flesh and sorrow paralleled desire in the immense complexity of love.
These moving stories by one of the great masters of Southern gothic portray love, sorrow and our
'What did she expect of him? What was her quest? Did she have an unfulfilled desire?'
Transgressive desires and sexual encounters are recounted in these four pieces from one of the greatest writer
Following one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest, utterly immersive portr
'Back, away from here, drowned people, go. I haven't stolen anyone's place'
A selection of poetry from the author of If this is a Man and The Periodic Table.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books cel
' "Of course, no one would want to say anything about a girl like this that's missing..." '
Malice, paranoia and creeping dread lie beneath the surface of ordinary American life in these chilling
'She was bored and fought against her boredom, which only bored her still more.'
Five sparkling, irreverent brief portraits of famous literary figures (including libertines, eccentrics and rogues)
My heart
brims with billows
and minnows
of shadows and silver
Beautiful, brutal, strange and lovely: this is Lorca reborn, in a selection of previously unpublished pieces and masterful new tran
'What use to a being that lives beneath a sun are jewels of gas and silver stars of ice?'
From a giant of twentieth-century science fiction, these four miniature space epics feature crazy inventor
'What if she isn't happy - does she think men are happy in this world? Doesn't she know how lucky she is to be a woman?'
The pioneering Betty Friedan here identifies the strange problem plaguing A
'Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.'
Science and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful Cosmicomic short stories.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pione
She had lived by delays; she had meant to stop drinking; she had put off the time, and now she had smashed her car.
At once harsh and tender, expansive and acutely funny, this is the story of an e
'Oh the cruelty of time, that destroys all things!'
Beguiling, strange and hair-raising tales from early 20th century Japan: Nagai's Behind the Prison, Uno's Closet LLB and Akutagawa's deeply maca
From the self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light.
Penguin Modern: fifty new
'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded'
Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race,
'The morning became a long, drawn-out afternoon that became depthless night dawning innocently through the house'
Tales of desire and madness from this giant of Brazilian literature.
Penguin Mo
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. H
'To create today is to create dangerously'
Camus argues passionately that the artist has a responsibility to challenge, provoke and speak up for those who cannot in this powerful speech, accompani
'If I think about it, and I have the time and inclination and capacity to do so, we dogs are an odd lot.'
How does a dog see the world? How do any of us? In this playful and enigmatic story of a c
'The illegible signature of teetering disaster'
Three great stories--The Aurelian, Signs and Symbols and Lance--the last both a derisive attack on science-fiction and an attempt to imagine the rea
' "Another hour gone. But I'm not afraid. There's only one thing I regret: that I've lived for so many years without knowing where human happiness is to be found" '
In these stories, four writers
'She only wished to prove to herself she was once more on a train going somewhere'
A passionate, unfulfilled woman considers her life and her marriage in this moving novella by one of America's fi
'The sap had dried up; the sap, the incentive, the fever, the desire to do, to act, to act the fool, make love, create'
A middle-aged woman breaks with her handsome young lover; a placid husband i