Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and S
Jacob, a Jewish slave held in a mountain village after escaping a massacre by Cossacks, will be killed if he tries to escape. The one saving grace is his love for his master's daughter, Wanda. They b
George Smiley, who is a troubled man of infinite compassion, is also a single-mindedly ruthless adversary as a spy.
The scene which he enters is a Cold War landscape of moles and lamplighters, sca
"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to
In 1964, renowned psychotherapist Virginia M. Axline visited a New York school. There she encountered a little boy apart from teachers and children. Dibs sat alone, or gently traced the edge of the r
A daring work of experimental, Modernist genius, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century, and the crowning glory of Joyce's life. The Pengui
Old Masters (1985) is Thomas Bernhard's devilishly funny story about the friendship between two old men.
For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintor
Steinbeck's first major critical and commercial success, Tortilla Flat is also his funniest novel.
Danny is a paisano, descended from the original Spanish settlers who arrived in Monterey, Califor
Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hope
How I Came to Know Fish (1974) is Ota Pavel's magical memoir of his childhood in Czechoslovakia. Fishing with his father and his Uncle Prosek - the two finest fishermen in the world - he takes a peac
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Mic
Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time
David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vac
Everybody knows now that Ulysses is the greatest novel of the century' Anthony Burgess, Observer
Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th June 1904, and what happens to the chara
The bestselling American classic of youthful rebellion and coming of age on the streets, adapted into an award-winning film by Francis Ford Coppola
The Greasers and the rich-kid Socs are at war on
Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War.
The most nostalgic
The difference between life and literature; the good intentions of holiday reading; the avante-garde; the fate of the novel; the fantastical; the art of translation: these are just some of the ideas
Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Califo
In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that 'bitter leave-taking': from his childhood and
Holly Golightly, glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while down. She's up all night drinking cocktails and breaking hearts. She's a shoplifter, a del
Ayn Rand's story of Howard Roark, a brilliant architect who dares to stand alone against the hostility of second-hand souls. First published in 1943, this best-selling novel is a passionate defense o
From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent her happie
Imagine the world if the Allies had lost the Second World War...
Philip K. Dick trips the switches of our minds with his vision of the world as it might have been: the African continent virtually
Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge is a tragic masterpiece of the inexorable unravelling of a man, set in a close-knit Italian-American community in 1950s New York.
Eddie Carbone is a lon
A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery
'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before
'The most esteemed philosopher to have produced a general introduction to his discipline since Bertrand Russell' Independent
In these essays, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth ce
The summation of the existentialist philosophy threaded throughout all his writing, Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus is translated by Justin O'Brien with an introduction by James Wood in Penguin Cl
It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life'
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will alway
'A masterpiece ... a moving image of post-war Poland, and the first breathing of one of the essential voices of the twentieth century... the master of literary reportage' The Times Literary Supplemen
A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age - The New York Times
Stanislaw Lem's set of short stories, written over a period of twenty years, all feature the adventures of space traveller Ijon Tichy and
Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson this autumn with a collection of her finest, darkest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best.
There's someth