The 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 spe
After twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela finally walked free in February 1990. This collection of his articles, speeches, letters from underground, and the transcripts from his trials, vivid
In his final years, Freud devoted most of his energies to a series of highly ambitious works on the broadest issues of religion and society.As early as 1908, he produced a powerful paper on the repres
A hugely influential philosophical work of prose poetry, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is an inspirational, allegorical guide to living, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction
When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 100,000 men, women and children, it was the beginning of a terrifying new episode in human history.Written only a year after
It is 1963 and Kenya is on the verge of Uhuru - independence day.The mighty British government has been toppled, and in the lull between the fighting and the new world, colonized and colonizer alike r
One of Spain's greatest and most well-loved poets, Lorca is admired for the emotional intensity and dark brilliance of his work. From the playful "Suites" to his dark vision of urban life, "Poet in Ne
Provides inspiration for anti-colonial movements ever since, analysing the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for freedom. In this book, the author makes clear the econ
Okonkwo is the greatest wrestler and warrior alive, and his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire in the harmattan. But when he accidently kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart.
In this second part of John Galworthy's trilogy of love, power, money and family feuding, a new generation has arrived to divide the Forsyte clan with society scandals and conflicting passions
In this final volume of The Forsyte Saga Galsworthy writes about the lives and loves of the Cherrell family, cousins of the Forsytes. For centuries, the Cherrell sons have left their home of Condaford
The Forsyte Saga is the first part of John Galsworthy’s magnificent, well-loved Forsyte Chronicles, which trace the changing fortunes of the wealthy Forsyte dynasty through fifty years of material tri
When Another Country appeared in 1962 it caused a literary sensation: among the storm of reviews the Sunday Times said 'Let our novelists read Mr Baldwin and tremble. There is a whirlwind loose in the
With his distinctive dark wit, Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall is a masterful social satire sending up the social mores of 1920s England, edited with an introduction by David Bradshaw in Penguin Moder
In Luanda, the capital of Angola, an apocalyptic atmosphere prevails as the Portuguese residents hurriedly desert the city. Determined to cover events as four hundred years of colonial rule come to an
Steinbeck's first posthumously published work, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a reinterpretation of tales from Malory's Morte d'Arthur. In this highly successful attempt to render Ma
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is often regarded as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire. Yet his writing reveals a ferociously independent figure at times violently opposed to the dominant poli
A fascinating insight into the vibrant culture of Modernism, and the rich artistic world of Paris's Left Bank, Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas includes an introduction by Thomas
Fictionalising his experience of service during the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour is the complete one-volume edition of his masterful trilogy, edited with an introduction by Angus C
From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. He became identified in the white press as a teacher of ra
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors a
The first volume in his Roads to Freedom trilogy, Jean-Paul Sartre's The Age of Reason is a philosophical novel exploring existentialist notions of freedom, translated by Eric Sutton with an introduct
Amory Blaine, intent on rebelling against his staid, Midwestern upbringing, longs to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication. In his quest for sexual and intellectual enlightenment, he progresses
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, howev
Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is translated from the French by Grace Frick with an introduction by Paul
Taking its title from T.S. Eliot's modernist poem The Waste Land, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a chronicle of Britain's decadence and social disintegration between the First and Second World Wa
A story of the troubled life of an introspective historian, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times - existentialism
Bringing into harsh focus the daily struggle for existence in a Soviet gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is translated by Ralph Parker in Penguin Modern Classics.
School 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 li
In one of the finest autobiographies to come out of the First World War, the poet Edmund Blunden records his devastating experiences in France and Flanders. Enlisting at the age of twenty, he took par
Saki is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for England's "Golden Afternoon"—the slow and peaceful years before the First World War. Although, like so many of his generation, he died tragica
Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as 'useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war', R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End is an unflinching vision of life in the trenches towards the end of the First Wo
Auden, Day, Lewis, Spender, MacNeice and the other key poets of the Thirties were children of the First World War, obsessed by war and by communalism, by the class-struggle and a passionate belief in
An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That is a matchless evocation of the Great
Offers accounts of 'Funes the Memorious', the man who can forget nothing; 'Pierre Menard, Author of the "Quixote"', who recreates Miguel de Cervantes' epic word-for-word; a society run on the basis of
Subtitled An Anglo-American Tragedy, Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One is a witty satirical novel on artistic integrity and the British expat community in Hollywood, published in Penguin Modern Classics. T
Her grand attempt to tell what she felt was the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith i
An 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 rand
