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The Pre-Raphaelites: From Rossetti to Ruskin
The Pre-Raphaelites were revolutionary in their ideas about love, nature and art, and their poetry reflects their passionately held belief in ‘art for art’s sake’. In this collection, recurrent themes of melancholy, sexual yearning and a fascination with the medieval emerge in poems such as Christina Rossetti’s dark fairytale ‘Goblin Market’, George Meredith’s radical sonnet sequence ‘Modern Love’ and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem ‘Jenny’, a monologue spoken by a young man to the prostitute with whom he spends the night. Also included here are less familiar works by Elizabeth Siddal, the ill-fated wife of Rossetti and the model for many of the group’s most famous paintings, and Coventry Patmore, whose poem ‘The Angel in the House’ championed an ideal of womanhood that was to grip the Victorian age. This fascinating collection reveals the contradictions within the movement – dreamy and hyper-real, sensuous and idealistic, innovative and yet recognizably ‘Victorian’ – and brings the verse to the forefront of a group as famous today for their love lives as their radical poetry.
The Pre-Raphaelites From Rossetti to Ruskin.
Flappers and Philosophers
Moving, ironic and often disquieting, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short fiction includes some of his very best writing, spanning his entire career. In the forty-five stories collected here, the early romance and optimism of the Jazz Age gives way to a darker cynicism of the 1930s, echoing the chequered fortunes of Fitzgerald himself as he struggled with alcoholism, debt and marital problems. This darkening mood is reflected in the titles of such late stories as ‘An Alcoholic Case’ and ‘The Lost Decade’, featuring failed Hollywood hack Pat Hobby. Other brilliant stories include ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ and ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’, a cautionary tale about the destructiveness of the American Dream. Distilled into these small and unforgettable masterpieces are the themes that run like threads through Fitzgerald’s novels: dreams, disenchantment, class relations, the dynamic between the sexes, and above all, the poignant and terrible awareness of loss.
Discover more Penguin Classics by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Central European Classics - 20% off
This series originates in a visit I made to Krakow last summer where I was talking to a Polish publisher who had known Czeslaw Milosz and who berated me for the useless way in which Milosz was published in English – it was his essays which were so valued and admired in Poland and yet these were virtually unknown in Britain.
Suitably shamed I read lots of the essays and, indeed, they were amazing. So then the challenge became, how could a suitable frame be created for republishing them? I have always been obsessed with Central Europe so it didn't take a huge leap of imagination to see that it might be possible to create a series which would allow readers to come to a range of great writers - the series could tell a story (from before the First World War to the last years of the Cold War), it could usefully highlight the switch from Soviet 'Eastern Europe' to modern 'Central Europe', and it could be made out of all kinds of writing - essays, novels, memoirs, philosophy, short stories.
Simon Winder, Editorial Director
Penguin Classics
Life in Verse
An inspiring collection of poems to touch your heart and change your life.
Poems can make us feel better in almost everything we do. They can encourage us and lift our spirits, make us laugh and offer us comfort in our lives, whether we are homesick, mourning a loved one, living in exile or simply finding our way in the world.
The poems in this book are among the most uplifting and life-affirming ever written – about love and loss, heartbreak and home – and express some of our most personal and extreme feelings. Life in Verse brings together new and old voices, from Shakespeare on grief and E. E. Cummings on falling in love, to Yeats on fading memories and Benjamin Zephaniah on finding your identity. Here are Philip Larkin’s ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’, Louis Macneice’s ‘Snow’ and even Roald Dahl’s ‘I’ve Eaten Many Strange and Scrumptious Dishes’, among many other enriching and inspiring verses.
Based on the discoveries and experiences of four public figures; actress Sheila Hancock, comedian Robert Webb, musician Cerys Matthews and writer Malorie Blackman, Life in Verse will give you poems to cherish for a special day, a tricky week – even a lifetime.
Life in Verse: Journeys through Poetry (ed. Alexis Kirschbaum)
from Modern Life / Robert Webb
On a Midsummer Eve / Thomas Hardy
I idly cut a parsley stalk,
And blew therein towards the moon;
I had not thought what ghosts would walk
With shivering footsteps to my tune.
I went and knelt, and scooped my hand
As if to drink, into the brook,
And a faint figure seemed to stand
Above me, with the bygone look.
I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,
I thought not what my words might be;
There came into my ear a voice
That turned a tenderer verse for me.
Read more extracts from Life in Verse.
This month we publish the second batch of our beautifully re-designed set of Nabokov books. Nabokov is not known as a satirical writer, but he is one of the great satirists of the 20th century. Lolita, his most famous novel, has always been conceived of as shocking but is rarely seen as satire, though it very much is a hilarious satire of Humbert Humbert, the pompous artist, charming sex fiend and talented serial fantasist. In novels such as Invitation to a Beheading and Bend Sinister he unsparingly teases out the illogic of tyranny and portrays malevolent totalitarianism. Unlike Kafka or Orwell, the 20th century's best-known political satirists, Nabokov's fiction was born of his own flight from totalitarianism, first from Russia and then from the Nazis.
These titles really are some of Nabokov's most powerful works, and I think you'll be surprised by the fierce political insights they contain, always within a beautifully written, plot-driven masterpiece.
Alexis Kirschbaum, Editorial Director
Penguin Classics
View all of Vladimir Nabokov's works
Noir Classics
It's always a delight to find titles in the Modern Classics range that you've never come across before, and what joy to be given both In a Lonely Place and If I Die Before I Wake to blurb. Stylish, moody noir novels, these are a great mix of snappy, modern and familiar (in the best way) and truly disturbing (which I'm always a fan of). And our wonderful Art department have also been kind enough to use film stills from the adaptations - so I also get to add books with Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth on the covers to my library. Joy.
Visit In a Lonely Place and If I Die Before I Wake.
This month we publish Peter Ackroyd’s re-telling of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in a gorgeous new paperback. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales has always been a favourite of mine but I particularly enjoy Ackroyd's version for the clarity and ease with which he delivers Chaucer's wonderful punch lines and irreverence.
I also recommend looking out for Peter Ackroyd’s brilliant new version of King Arthur and the Holy Grail published this autumn.
Alexis Kirschbaum, Editorial Director
Penguin Classics
On publication, Ackroyd’s hugely entertaining modern retelling of Chaucer’s tales received unanimous praise:
‘The only version to read’
Time Out
‘Ackroyd’s retelling is compulsive, bold and rare’
Observer
And the Sunday Telegraph, picked up on the modern style of Ackroyd’s version, advising its readers that – unlike the original – Ackroyd’s Canterbury Tales, is ‘an easy read…you can just gallop through’.
Visit Peter Ackroyd's retelling of The Canterbury Tales
The Picture of Dorian Gray
We’re really excited to be supporting the Dublin: One City, One Book initiative again in 2010. This year’s chosen title is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray so this April will see Dublin ‘Go Wilde in the City’ with a fantastic series of events, including walks, readings and exhibitions. There will be film screenings, performances – and a decadent poetry jam – all drawing on the rich narrative of Wilde’s only novel.
With striking new jacket artwork for five Oscar Wilde titles there’s no better time to discover, or re-discover, Oscar Wilde’s writing. Read his whimsical, poignant short stories in The Canterville Ghost, The Happy Prince and Other Stories, explore his meditations on nature, art and mortality in The Decay of Lying, discover his poetry with The Ballad of Reading Gaol, revel in his famed witticisms in Nothing … Except My Genius - or join with Dublin and enjoy the decadent delights of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Visit Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
'An anthology is not only a collection of texts or poems, but a gift, something we arrange, according to our sensitivities, to give to others. The flowers themselves are not created by us - in this case, the books that I choose to present you, lie in front of me as a vast field of flowers, stretching infinitely into time's horizon...' Paulo Coelho
Discover the many Classics that have inspired Paulo Coelho in this wonderful new book. Coelho has collected extracts from the many Penguin Classics that have personal significance to him, grouping them by the elements - fire, air, earth and water - each of which he introduces with a short piece on the collection.
Visit Paulo Coleho's Inspirations
In Praise of Older Women
In Praise of Older Women is one of those modern classics you can't quite believe is new to the Penguin list. First published by the author Stephen Vizinczey himself in 1965 In Praise of Older Women is a wonderfully charming, erotic and witty coming-of-age novel, which has been translated into numerous languages and sold millions of copies, topping the bestseller lists in France, Italy, Spain and Canada where it was first published. I believe its continued appeal is down to the deceptive simplicity of the story and the author's smooth, appealing prose, not to mention the universal, timeless interest in sex! Now back in print in the UK after twenty years this is the perfect time to (re)discover this true modern classic.
Adam Freudenheim,
Penguin Classics Publisher
This book has had extraordinary review from across the world. Here are just a few:
'You cannot put it down: witty, moving and it's all about sex'
Margaret Drabble
'A masterpiece ... dazzling ... like all great novels, it shows the truth about life'
Le Monde
'At the basis of pleasure, of eroticism, Vizinczey places consciousness. His novel consists of scenes which you can see ... Stupefying: it leaves you breathless with excitement. Here, everything is living ardour, inexhaustible fervour'
Giorgio Montefoschi, Corriere della Sera
'The delicious adventures of a young Casanova who appreciates maturity while acquiring it himself. In turn naive, sophisticated, arrogant, disarming, the narrator woos his women and his tale wins the reader'
Polly Devlin, Vogue
'Refreshing, individual, forthright'
The New York Times
'The rediscovery of a great European writer ... There are few books that show love in a new and surprising way, and this is unquestionably one of them'
Rainer Moritz, Deutsche Rundfunk
Visit Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women
The Education of a British-Protected Child
And here's a wonderful taster from Chinua Achebe's 'The Education of a British-Protected Child'
Many parents like me, who never read children's books in their own childhood, saw a chance to give to their children the blessings of modern civilization which they never had and grabbed it. But what I saw in many of the books was not civilization but condescension and even offensiveness.
Here retold in my own words, is a mean story hiding behind the glamorous covers of a children's book:
A white boy is playing with his kite in a beautiful open space on a clear summer's day. In the background are lovely houses and gardens and tree-lined avenues. The wind is good and the little boy's kite rises higher and higher and higher. It flies so high in the end that it gets caught under the tail of an airplane that just happens to be passing overhead at that very moment. Trailing the kite, the airplane flies on past cities and oceans and deserts. Finally it is flying over forests and jungles. We see wild animals in the forests and we see little round huts in the clearing. An African village.
For some reason, the kite untangles itself at this point and begins to fall while the airplane goes on its way. The kite falls and falls and finally comes to rest on top of a coconut tree.
A little black boy climbing the tree to pick a coconut beholds this strange and terrifying object sitting on top of the tree. He utters a piercing cry and literally falls off the tree.
His parents and their neighbours rush to the scene and discuss this apparition with great fear and trembling. In the end they send for the village witch doctor, who appears in his feathers with an entourage of drummers. He offers sacrifices and prayers and then sends his boldest man up the tree to bring down the object, which he does with appropriate reverence. The witch doctor then leads the village in a procession from the coconut tree to the village shrine, where the super-natural object is deposited and where it is worshipped to his day.
That was the most dramatic of the many imported, beautifully packaged, but demeaning readings available to our children perhaps given them as birthday presents by their parents.'
Visit Achebe's 'The Education of a British-Protected Child'
The Arabian Nights
Now available in paperback is the first complete translation since 1880 of The Arabian Nights, one of the best-known and most influential classics of world literature. The Sunday Times says: The Arabian Nights is not a book to be read in a week. It is an ocean of stories to be dipped into over a lifetime. And this new Penguin edition is the one to have.'
Fallada paints such a vivid, visceral engaging and distressingly believable picture of what life was like in wartime Berlin, you'll ask yourself what you would have done in the shoes of the main characters.
Aside from the sheer pleasure and excitement of the book as page-turning thriller, its significance is perhaps best summed up by Geoff Wilkes in his afterword to the paperback. Wilkes suggests that it is the novel's exploration of 'the banality of good' in contrast to Hannah Arendt's later exploration of the 'banality of evil' which in part explains why Alone in Berlin endures and still so successfully provokes and moves us.
Victorian Classics
From the moment the books in this series appeared, they were sensationally popular, bestsellers at the time of publication and continuing to be read for years afterwards throughout the Victorian era. Some were considered immoral and depraved for their stories of murder, bigamy, crime, adultery and seduction. Some were serialized in magazines or penny dreadfuls and avidly devoured once a week by readers. Some even caused a public outcry. All of them are compulsive, unputdownable page-turners - the original thrillers.
Full of vendettas and desperate quests, bitter memories and sordid fantasies, these eighteen tales of the macabre show Dahl’s dark brilliance as a short-story writer, in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time.
Three new titles now complete the list of Paul Bowles' major works all published in Penguin Modern Classics, with some brilliant new introductions by Paul Theroux and others.
Up Above the World, The Spider’s House and Collected Stories are now available.
A historical publishing event is upon us this month, as Penguin Classics publishes Nabokov’s final masterwork, which has been kept hidden by his son for over 30 years. We have also re-issued the rest of Nabokov’s oevre in a beautiful new look.
Published to coincide with the film Bright Star, out this month, and with an introduction by the film’s director Jane Campion, this is a beautiful collection of the love letters that John Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne.
Great Ideas IV - The beautiful new series
Delve into our new series of Great Ideas that have changed the world, inspiring debate, dissent, war and revolution. This series of 20 books has a beautiful new set of jackets.
Just in time for Halloween
Just in time for Halloween, we are delighted to publish the queen of suspense, Shirley Jackson. Scare yourself with The Lottery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and Haunting of the Hill House.
Discover a new translation of Tolstoy's most controversial novel, and the last major work he wrote before his death. Resurrection is a psychological tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness.
Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho
For the very first time Penguin Classics is publishing a new translation of all that remains of Sappho's complete poetry, Stung with Love, with an introduction by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.
» Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
This month we publish Frank Wynne's new translation of Jules Verne’s classic science-fiction story, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, first published in 1864. This edition features an introduction by Jane Smiley.
» Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Susan Sontag - The definitive collection
For the very first time in Penguin Modern Classics, we are publishing the definitive collection of Susan Sontag’s best known and most important works.
» Susan Sontag - The definitive collection
The Prince, translated by Tim Parks
This fresh translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince by novelist and translator Tim Parks delivers Machiavelli’s no-nonsense original straight, making it as alarming and enlightening as when it was first written.
» The Prince, translated by Tim Parks
60 years of Nineteen-Eighty Four
On the 60th anniversary of the publication of Nineteen-Eighty Four, we are celebrating one of the greatest authors of the 20th century with a beautiful edition of this groundbreaking work that changed the way we see the world forever.
Accompanying this are beautiful new editions of Orwell's Complete Novels and other writings, featuring new introductions from Jeremy Paxman and Emma Larkin
» 60 years of Nineteen-Eighty Four
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
To mark the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth, Penguin Classics brings you a new collection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry, selected and introduced by Peter Ackroyd, Poe's foremost biographer. This edition also features specially commissioned cover art by well known contemporary artist Harland Miller.
» The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
The Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels
Over 150 years after publication, The Condition of the Working Class in England is still considered to be one of the greatest works of social history. With a new introduction by Tristram Hunt - one of Britain's best known young historians - this edition is being published to coincide with Hunt's major new biography of Engels, The Frock-Coated Communist.
» Discover The Condition of the Working Class in England
Tarka the Otter tells the story of a fierce struggle for survival in the wild, but is also a celebration of life, the eternal rhythms of nature and the English countryside.
» Tarka the Otter, featuring an introduction by Jeremy Gavron
This beautifully designed series of 20 books covers all aspects of the British countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).
» Discover the English Journeys
The Canterbury Tales, re-told by Peter Ackroyd
Famous for its ingenuity and wit, The Canterbury Tales is a major part of England's literary heritage. This modern re-telling, by Britain's celebrated biographer Peter Ackroyd, uses expletives and avoids euphemism to bring the tales to a new generation of readers.
» Rediscover The Canterbury Tales
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
Penguin Classics is proud to publish for the first time this extraordinary masterpiece, translated by the award-winning Michael Hoffman.
Alone in Berlin is both a dark, fast-paced wartime thriller, and also a chilling portrayal of a paranoid, brutal society, where the smallest action can have fatal consequences.
» Find out more about Alone in Berlin
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel evokes a world of smoky clubs, steamy nights, sharp suits and stiletto heels, while doubling up as moving tribute to love, family, community and the life-enhancing power of music.
» Get lost as The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, with original cover artwork by Damien Hirst
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, we are proud to publish this landmark edition with a new introduction and new apparatus by Professor William Bynum and original cover artwork by Damien Hirst.
» See more on On the Origin of Species here
Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
In celebration of Valentine's Day, we present this alternative anthology of love stories, because love doesn't always involve hearts and flowers and walks in the park...
» Read more about Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
Three Tales from the Arabian Nights and Three Volume Edition
A magnificent collection of ancient tales from Arabia, India, and Persia, full of wonderful adventures, and vicious viziers and beautiful princesses mingled with wily peasants and powerful genies.
» Find out more about Three Tales from the Arabian Nights and Three Volume Edition
This new selection by Ian Rankin from Scotland's national poet reveals that Robert Burns is a greater poet than those that know him only through annual Burns' Suppers and choruses of his 'Auld Lang Syne'.
» Find out more about the Poems of Robert Burns
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
Published for the first time anywhere, this novel is a fictionalized account of the week leading up to a true-life murder. From this intensely personal material Burroughs and Kerouac made a hardboiled account of a group of friends moving through each other's apartments, killing time drinking, talking and taking drugs, drifting towards a bloody crime.
» Find out more about And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
The result of a creative collaboration between Bill Amberg and the world's favourite publisher, now you can own your favourite Penguin Classic in a beautifully-crafted leather bound edition designed by London-based leather designer Bill Amberg.
» Find out more about the Bill Amberg Collaboration
Part of our Gothic Classics series - ten terrifying tales of the supernatural - eerie visitations, revenge from beyond the grave, vampire love and many other macabre manifestations from the masters of the genre.
» Find out more about the Gothic Reds
Mystery and excitement abound in this lively collection of fairy tales, folklore and legends, which celebrate Scotland's enormously rich oral tradition and offers a carefully chosen combination of old favourites such as Tam Lin, Thomas Rymer and Adam Bell, as well as more modern stories by master story-tellers like Andrew Lang, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan.
Alexander Pushkin: Eugene Onegin
Shakespeare is to English Literature as Pushkin is to Russia Literaure, and if Pushkin is Russia's most famous and best loved poet, Eugene Onegin is his most famous work.
We are very proud to publish this month, for the first time ever, Jack Kerouac's 1955 biography of the founder of Buddhism, Wake Up
For the first time in Modern Classics Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, with an introduction by the ever-popular novelist Paolo Coehlo.
This 'greatest hits' set features more writing from the most popular writers of the first series, such as Kierkegaard and Orwell, giving readers the chance to read more widely from some of the greatest writers who ever lived.
We are very proud to publish this month our beautiful hardback edition of the first new translation of the Qur'an for Penguin Classics in 50 years. The tenents of Islam are conveyed in powerful language by one of the foremost scholars of Islamic History, Tarif Khalidi. As the Qur'an is considered in Islam to be the infallible word of God, a new translation is a great event indeed.
On the Road: The Original Scroll
We are also proud to publish in paperback for the first time our enormously successful edition of On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac. This is the very first publication of the original transcript, one of the most significant and provocative works in the contemporary history of American literature.
We are very pleased to introduce Ian Fleming's Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories to the Modern Classics list, bringing together all of the James Bond short stories in one volume for the first time. Hugely enjoyable and consummately stylish, Ian Fleming’s James bond is an icon of our time.
We are excited to introduce for the first time in Modern Classics Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Cat's Cradle, with an introduction by the American novelist Benjamin Kunkel. With his death in 2007, Vonnegut's reputation as a literary idol of the 60s and 70s was confirmed, and he in now considered one of the most important novelists of the 20th century.
A hymn to 1960s counter-culture the Cat's Cradle is a cult tale of global destruction that belongs to the Early Cold War period.
We publish a major new translation of Demons, one of Dostoyevsky's four great novels.
Partly based on the real-life case of a student murdered by his fellow revolutionaries, Demons is a powerful and prophetic, yet lively and often comic depiction of nineteenth-century Russia. It is also a fascinating exploration into the psyche of the 19th century terrorist, which is pertinent to the society we live in today.
This year marks 400 years since the birth of John Milton. Milton was a master of almost every type of verse, from the classical to the religious and from the lyrical to the epic. Now Claire Tomalin, author of several highly acclaimed biographies, edits and introduces this new selection of Milton’s poems, in a hardback with beautiful cover design. Dive into Milton.
Love is strange, love is beautiful, love is dangerous
Love is never what you expect it to be. In a collection that’s perfect for Valentine’s Day, Penguin brings you the most seductive, inspiring and surprising writing on love in all its infinite variety, spanning over two thousand years and vastly different worlds, Great Loves.
See the collection of twenty works and find out more about their beautifully designed covers here.
'Eileen Chang is the fallen angel of Chinese literature'
Ang Lee
Known as "the Garbo of Chinese letters" for her elegance and the aura of mystery that surrounded her, Eileen Chang is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential modern Chinese novelists of the twentieth century. She was born in Shanghai in 1920. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she published two works, Romances and Written on Water, that established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to Hong Hong in 1952 and to the United States in 1955, where she continued to write. She died in Los Angeles in 1995.
We are delighted to be publishing Chang's work for the first time in the UK with two stunning collections of stories: Love in a Fallen City and Lust, Caution. The second one - an intensely passionate story of love and espionage, set in Shanghai during World War II - is now a major film directed by Oscar-winning Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) which will be shown in British cinemas from January 4th. Eileen Chang's novel Eighteen Springs will be published for the first time in English by Penguin Classics in 2009.
Read the Translator's Afterword
Mariateresa Boffo,
Senior Commissioning Editor, Penguin Classic
The entire Penguin Classics team is incredibly excited to be publishing, for the first in English, Irmgard Keun’s utterly enchanting, little-known novel Child of all Nations.
First published in German in 1938, it is the captivating story of a young girl, Kully, forced to travel around Europe with her exiled parents as Europe prepares for war. The story is told from young Kully's point of view, and her voice and the perspective of when it was written add poignancy to the story. Kully knows a lot of things, but there are still things she just doesn’t understand – like why there might soon be a war in Europe.
Child of all Nations is sensitively translated by award-winning poet and translator Michael Hofmann, who made his name translating the works of Franz Kafka, Ernst Junger and Joseph Roth. And it is via Joseph Roth that Hofmann came to Keun and to this charming novel, as Keun was Roth's companion during his own exile in the 1930s. Keun then spent the war years living semi-legally in Germany and it was only late in her life and after her death in 1982that she was rediscovered in Germany. With this sparkling new translation Keun’s forgotten masterpiece is brought to a new generation of English readers for the very first time.
Anne Michaels, author of the acclaimed Fugitive Pieces, calls Kully’s voice 'hugely engaging' and says 'the book breathes compassion' and that the book has 'room for everything – shrewdness, forgiveness, wit and loneliness – while love makes all its hopeless deals with hope'.
Adam Freudenheim
Penguin Classics Publisher
This month, we’re delighted to be publishing the third volume in Dante's Divine Comedy. Robert Kirkpatrick has translated the whole epic masterpiece, and you can see all three volumes here:
» Inferno
» Purgatorio
» Paradiso
