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'Boell's novel blows a stent in the human heart. . . It feels more necessary than ever.' Anna Funder, from the introduction'This is the best book I have read this year; not by miles, but by whole astr

The exquisite last novel from Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari KawabataIneko has lost the ability to see things. At first it was a ping-pong ball, then it was her fiance. The doctors call it 'body

This enthralling tale of a “material girl” in 1930s Berlin is the masterpiece of a literary icon, rediscovered and restored to the same heights as such luminaries as Isherwood and Brecht.In 1931 a young woman writer living in Germany penned her answer to Anita Loos’sGentlemen Prefer Blondesand the era of cinematic glamour:The Artificial Silk Girl. Though a Nazi censorship board banned Irmgard Keun’s work in 1933 and destroyed all existing copies, the novel survived, as fresh and relevant today as the day it was written.The Artificial Silk Girlis the story of Doris, beautiful and striving, who vows to write down all that happens to her as the star of her own life story. But instead of scripting what she hopes will be a quick rise to fame and fortune as either an actress or the mistress/wife of a wealthy man, she describes a slow descent into near prostitution and homelessness. Prewar Berlin is not the dazzling and exciting city of promise it seems; Doris unwittingly reveals a bleak, sea

This landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twe

Ford Madox Ford's great masterpiece exploring love and identity during the First World War, in a Penguin Classics edition with an introduction by Julian Barnes. A masterly novel of destruction and reg

''A fantasy, impossible but delicious ... an exuberance of life and wit''The Times Literary SupplementFirst masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf''s own time. Written for the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, this playful mock biography of a chameleon-like historical figure is both a wry commentary on gender and, in Woolf''s own words, a ''writer''s holiday'' which delights in its ambiguity and capriciousness.Edited by Brenda Lyons with an Introduction and Notes by Sandra M. Gilbert

As the First World War reaches its final year, an illicit love affair is beginning between a sixteen-year-old boy and a young woman married to a soldier at the front. They meet secretly in her flat on

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his sto

A collection of Kafka's greatest stories, including his famous tale of alienation, now in Penguin Black ClassicsThis collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includesMetamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation;Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies;The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity;The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, andThe Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. This Penguin Classics ed

The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb new translation by Michael HofmannFranz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a monstrous blow which might just prove his final downfall.A dazzling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang,Berlin Alexanderplatzis the great novel of Berlin life: inventing, styling and recreating the city as reality and dream; mimicking its movements and rhythms; immortalizing its pubs, abattoirs, apartments and chaotic streets. From the gutter to the stars, this is the whole picture of the city.Berlin Alexanderplatzbrought fame in 1929 to its author Alfred Döblin, until then an impe

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his sto

"Radical and inspiring ... Yanagi's vision puts the connection between heart and hand before the transient and commercial" - Edmund de WaalThe daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects,

For the first time in his career Inspector Maigret receives written summons to the Prefect's office where he learns that he has been accused of assaulting a young woman. With his career and reputation

One of the greatest American novels of all time - reissued in a stunning hardback to celebrate the Salinger centenary It's Christmas and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school

Haunting, terrifying and hilarious, The Day of the Oprichnik is a dazzling novel and a fierce critique of life in the New Russia Moscow 2028: Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, oprichnik, member of the czar's

A darkly comic dystopian odyssey, from one of Russia's leading contemporary novelists Garin, a country doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is tra

Bassani's six classic books, collected for the first time in English as the epic masterwork they were intended to be. Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second W

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's seminal classic, now back in a beautiful hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great

The canonical Spanish classic, now in a beautiful hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithDon Quixote has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight erran

Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into 'the theatre of the real' by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and deli

A special edition of John le Carré's thrilling novel of espionage and betrayal in the Middle East, to tie in with the forthcoming BBC series starring Alexander Skarsgård, Michael Shannon and Florence

Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into 'the theatre of the real' by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and deli

The final novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is a celebration of the American midwest with Cather's strongest heroine at its heart Jim and Antonia meets as children in the wide open plains of Neb

'An adventure that takes us to the ends of the earth via the rich but often barren landscape of the human heart' The Times Why was an English lawyer shot dead in Turkey by his firm's top client? How c

'The book breathes life, anger and excitement' Observer Tessa Quayle, a brilliant and beautiful young social activist, has been found brutally murdered by Lake Turkana in Nairobi. The rumours are that

In the second part of John le Carré's Karla Trilogy, the battle of wits between spymaster George Smiley and his Russian adversary takes on an even more dangerous dimension. George Smiley, now acting h

Wonderful' The New York Times Charlie, a jobbing young English actress, is accustomed to playing different roles. But when the mysterious, battle-scarred Joseph recruits her into the Israeli secret se

'One of the most sophisticated fictional responses to the war on terror yet published' Guardian An illegal Muslim immigrant arrives in Hamburg with a traumatic past and the key to a fortune held in a

'Splendid ... le Carré shows how endowed he is with the gift of storytelling' The Times Aldo Cassidy is a cautious man. He has a pleasant family, drives a safe, expensive car and wears luxurious cloth

'The best English novel since the war' Philip Roth Magnus Pym - ranking diplomat, consummate Englishman, loving husband, secret agent - has vanished. Has he defected? Gone to ground? As the hunt for P

The concluding part of John le Carré's celebrated Karla Trilogy, Smiley's People sees the last confrontation between the indefatigable spymaster George Smiley and his great enemy, as their rivalry com

A collection of the most famous cases faced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless creation, now in a beautiful hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithThis collection of The Adventures of S

'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!' The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases eve

A timeless travelogue from the leading light of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller is a jubilant celebration of human discovery As he roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and Londo

'Kerouac's grittiest novel ... sensual and uninhibited' The New York Times Driven mad by three years of endless telegrams, phonecalls, mail, reporters and snoopers in the wake of his hugely successful

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed it To the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their

'I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's' Bob Dylan Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero, the mystical traveller Dean Moriarty, on a breathless,

Jack Kerouac's classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery throu

A dark love story set in wartime Rome from the author of In Love and Your Face for the World to See Rome, 1944. Robert is a lonely American soldier looking for a girl. Lisa is cold and hungry, obliged