Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

The father of contemporary European detective fiction Ann Cleeves Maigret shrugged his shoulders, buried his hands in his pockets and went off without answering. He had just spent one of the most wretched days in his life. For hours, in his corner he had felt old and feeble, without idea or incentive. But now a tiny flame flickered. You bet well see he growled.Maigrets peaceful retirement in the countryside is disrupted when a relative unwittingly embroils himself in a crime he did not commit an...

A poignant meditation on the nature of desire, and the enduring power of love, Gabriel Garcia Marquezs Love in the Time of Cholera is translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman in Penguin Modern Classics.Florentino Ariza is a hopeless romantic who falls passionately for the beautiful Fermina Daza, but finds his love tragically rejected. Instead Fermina marriesdistinguished doctor Juvenal Urbino, while Florentino can only wait silently for her. He can never forget his first and only true love....

The compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them - the world of cricket, homework and adventure stories - and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible.

Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine ... You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent Martin Amis, ObserverPoet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humberts sed...

Banned and vindicated, condemned and lauded, Lady Chatterleys Lover is D.H. Lawrences seminal novel of illicit passion and forbidden desire. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with notes by Michael Squires and an introduction by Doris Lessing.Lady Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the Sir Clifford. Paralysed in the First World War, Sir Clifford is unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, and encourages her instead to have a liaison with a man of their...

The brilliant tale of Anais Nins true love affair with Henry Miller, and her ambiguous, charged relationship with his wife, June. Drawn from the journals of a single momentous year in Paris, Henry and June provides a wildly lyrical account of a womans sexual awakening and the disillusion of idealized marriage.

James Baldwins electrifying first novel.I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.Drawing on James Baldwins own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fana...

The most popular anthology of Jorge Luis Borgess short stories, Fictions is a wildly original and influential collection of fantastic tales, translated from the Spanish with an afterword by Andrew Hurley in Penguin Modern Classics.Jorge Luis Borgess Fictions introduced an entirely new voice into world literature. It is here that we find the astonishing accounts of Funes the Memorious, the man who can forget nothing; Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, who recreates Miguel de Cervantess epic wo...

These essays, reviews and articles illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and who elevated political writing to an art.

Collecting five stories of suspense, mystery and slow, creeping horror, Daphne Du Mauriers Dont Look Now and Other Stories includes an introduction by Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black, in Penguin Modern Classics.John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughters death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and v...

Still an acknowledged masterpiece and a model for historical fiction ... sympathetic and intensely involving: a great feat of imagination Hilary Mantel Bringing to life the intrigue of ancient Rome, Robert Gravess I, Claudius is one of the most celebrated, gripping historical novels ever writtenDespised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. I...

A sizzling drama of desire, avarice and deception set in the American Deep South, Tennessee Williamss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is published in Penguin Modern Classics.Big Daddy Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. His two sons have returned home for the occasion: Gooper, his wife and children, Brick, an ageing football hero who has turned to drink, and his feisty wife Maggie. As the hot summer evening unfolds, the veneer of ha...

Immortalised by Audrey Hepburns sparkling performance in the 1961 film of the same name, Breakfast at Tiffanys is Truman Capotes timeless portrait of tragicomic cultural icon Holly Golightly, published in Penguin Modern Classics. Its New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffanys. And nice girls dont, except, of course, for Holly Golightly: glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while - down. Pursued by to...

A towering philosophical novel that is the summation of her Objectivist philosophy, Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged is the saga of the enigmatic John Galt, and his ambitious plan to stop the motor of the world, published in Penguin Modern Classics.Opening with the enigmatic question Who is John Galt?, Atlas Shrugged envisions a world where the men of talent - the great innovators, producers and creators - have mysteriously disappeared. With the US economy now faltering, businesswoman Dagny Taggart is s...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller.I have always depended on the kindness of strangersFading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New ...

My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction Zadie SmithMore than a love story, A Room with a View is a penetrating social comedy and a brilliant study of contrasts - in values, social class, and cultural perspectives - and the ingenuity of fate. Its heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, visits Italy with her prim cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, where she meets the unconventional, lower class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to the supercilious Cecil...

His great book ... masterly in its prescience and its lucidity ANITA DESAI A compelling portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India depicts the fate of individuals caught in the great political and cultural conflicts of their age. It begins when Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, and feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community. Determined to explore the real India, they seek the guidance of the charming an...

I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language ... a very funny book William S. Burroughs Fifteen-year-old Alex doesnt just like ultra-violence - he also enjoys rape, drugs and Beethovens ninth. He and his gang of droogs rampage through a dystopian future, hunting for terrible thrills. But when Alex finds himself at the mercy of the state and subject to the ministrations of Dr Brodsky, and the mind-altering treatment of the Ludovico Technique, he discovers that fun is no lo...

A black comedy of manners about vast wealth and a woman who can define herself only through the perceptions of others. The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City - people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. But her quest comes to a scandalous end when s...

The chilling true crime non-fiction novel that made Truman Capotes name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capotes comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terribl...