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Classic fiction Books 294 results

  • A POET CAN SURVIVE EVERYTHING BUT A MISPRINT
    A POET CAN SURVIVE EVERYTHING BUT A MISPRINT
    OSCAR. WILDE
    "All art," Oscar Wilde once announced, "is quite useless." Selected here are some of his finest prose works on the subject of art - useless, illuminating, artificial, uplifting, radical, gorgeous, boring, sublime - and his most brilliant aphorisms on the creative life. Whether lamenting the crass urge to hold art to realist or natural standards or arguing against morality as a ...
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  • HOP-FROG
    HOP-FROG
    EDGAR ALLAN POE
    Edgar Allen Poe's short stories have lost none of their power to horrify. He remains a destabilizingly terse sketcher out of ideas, a writer who allows the reader to fill in the many ghastly blanks in his narratives of violence, retribution and animalism. It is hard to recommend Hop-Frog wholeheartedly (its original subtitle was: Or, The Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs) as it is s...
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  • THE RICH BOY
    THE RICH BOY
    F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
    Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me . . . In this glittering new selection of Fitzgerald's short stories, we meet Anson Hunter, 'The Rich Boy', whose opulent, haunting world paints a vivid portrait of the American elite. 'Absolution' offers a poignant glimpse into the soul of a young boy grappling with sin, whilst 'May Day' captures the whir...
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  • THE BLAZING WORLD
    THE BLAZING WORLD
    MARGARET CAVENDISH
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 'I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, than live in obscure and sluggish security' In 1666, Margaret Cavendish had a vision: there was a crack in reality at the North Pole leading to a utopian parallel universe, where gender roles, scientific orthodoxy and political norms had been razed to the ground. ...
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  • THE NEW DRESS
    THE NEW DRESS
    VIRGINIA WOOLF
    'Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your - buried treasure? The light in the heart."' In these exquisite stories from the genius of English modernism, everyday objects acquire profound significance: a lump of buried green glass leads to a lifetime of obsession; a mark on the wall prompts a questioning of reality itself; a pale-yellow silk dress provokes a painful self-reckoning. Beaut...
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  • THE FIRE NEXT TIME
    THE FIRE NEXT TIME
    JAMES BALDWIN
    'It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate' Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice, drawn from Baldwin's early life in Harlem and his exper...
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  • A MOMENT OF WAR
    A MOMENT OF WAR
    LAURIE LEE
    In one of the great English war memoirs, we learn what it is to cross the Pyrenees through freezing snow to fight fascism in Spain; to narrowly escape execution by your own side; to kill a man with a borrowed rifle and feel nothing but shame. Moving and shrapnel-sharp, A Moment of War recalls the defeat of idealism; 'that flush of youth which never doubts self-survival, that id...
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  • THE BURIAL OF THE RATS
    THE BURIAL OF THE RATS
    BRAM STOKER
    The bones were still warm; but they were picked clean. They had even eaten their own dead This spine-chilling collection from Dracula creator Bram Stoker showcases five haunting tales, including the newly discovered 'Gibbet Hill'. From 'Dracula's Guest', thought by many to be the original excised opening of Dracula itself, to the sinister 'The Judge's House,' each gripping sto...
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  • A CONFIRMED BACHELOR
    A CONFIRMED BACHELOR
    ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
    Following the death of his sister, middle-aged Dr Graesler leaves his winter home in Lanzarote for a health resort in Germany, where he practised medicine for many years. There he meets the Schleheim family, and is particularly drawn to their daughter Sabine. But a simple, stilted courtship soon unravels a web of hushed-up suicide and illicit sexual liaisons. Arthur Schnitzler'...
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  • THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND BY A PARTIAL, PREJUDICED AND IGNORANT HISTORIAN
    THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND BY A PARTIAL, PREJUDICED AND IGNORANT HISTORIAN
    JANE AUSTEN
    During his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for. In Jane Austen's breezy and entirely biased telling of English history, Mary, Queen of Scots is a scandalously wronged victim, Elizabeth I is a wicked villain and most historical facts and dates are cheerfully disregarded. It is accompanied here by other riotous early pieces in which young women steal money,...
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  • THE BROKEN NEST
    THE BROKEN NEST
    RABINDRANATH. TAGORE
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Rabindranath Tagore was one of the greatest authors of his generation. In these two short stories - 'The Broken Nest' and 'Dead or Alive' - he is at his devastating best, charting the slow, then fast, implosion of two perfect Bengali households. No-one understands each other; everything is misconstrued; all is lost. ...
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  • ECCE HOMO
    ECCE HOMO
    DAMBUDZO MARECHERA
    I am not a man, I am dynamite Weeks before his final mental breakdown, Nietzsche set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo is the result. A summary of his life's work as a philosopher, with chapter headings including 'Why I Am So Wise' and 'Why I Write Such Good Books', it is part mocking self-judgement and part battle cry, and remains one of the most singular, stran...
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  • THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN
    THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN
    FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
    I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank A delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his wife's suicide; a witness to a young girl's ruin; a writer who stretches out on a gravestone and listens to the gossip of the dead ... the narrators of these four confessional tales show how little we und...
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  • THOUSAND CRANES
    THOUSAND CRANES
    YASUNARI KAWABATA
    Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father, only to find that the mistress' rival and successor is also present. He falls for her, with devastating consequences. By 1949 Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, felt that the tradition of the tea ceremony had been degraded. In this delicate novella he use...
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  • A LEOPARD-SKIN HAT
    A LEOPARD-SKIN HAT
    ANNE SERRE
    A Leopard-Skin Hat may be Anne Serre's most moving novel yet. A masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance, it is the story of an intense friendship between the Narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, an...
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    14,99 €

  • CHESS
    CHESS
    STEFAN ZWEIG
    '... a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!' A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger...
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  • HORSIE
    HORSIE
    DOROTHY PARKER
    What can you say, when a man asks you to dance with him? I most certainly will not dance with you. I'll see you in hell first. Why, thank you, I'd like to awfully, but I'm having labor pains. Acerbic, pithy and vibrant, Dorothy Parker's writings capture the dizzying decadence of Jazz Age New York. Though Parker refuses to be swept along- she gleefully deconstructs its hypocrisy...
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  • A HUNGER-ARTIST
    A HUNGER-ARTIST
    FRANZ KAFKA
    The whole town got involved with the hunger-artist; from day to day of his starving, people's participation grew; everyone wanted to see the hunger-artist at least once a day; on the later days there were season-ticket holders who sat for days on end in front of his little cage Reading these stories by the master of the absurd is like entering a dreamworld in which nothing, and...
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  • SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
    SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
    W. B YEATS
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 'Under bare Ben Bulben's headIn Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.An ancestor was rector thereLong years ago, a church stands near, By the road an ancient cross.No marble, no conventional phrase;On limestone quarried near the spotBy his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eyeOn life, on death.Horseman, pass by!' ...
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  • THE DREAMING CHILD
    THE DREAMING CHILD
    KAREN BLIXEN
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 'As for me I have one ambition only: to invent stories, very beautiful stories' Gothic, expansive and truly spellbinding, Karen Blixen's short stories offer incisive psychological portraits and imaginative visions of war, longing and tender love. Here, an orphan boy creates an elaborate fantasy of a life of grandeur, a feu...
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  • COAL
    COAL
    AUDRE. LORDE
    'I am Black because I come from the earth's inside now take my word for jewel in the open light.' Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection is a testament to Lorde's beloved and hugely influential lyric voice, which faithfully captures the c...
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  • A DILL PICKLE
    A DILL PICKLE
    KATHERINE. MANSFIELD
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksShe drew a long, soft breath, as though the paper daffodils between them were almost too sweet to bear Katherine Mansfield was a magician of the short story, whose work was described by Virginia Woolf as 'the only writing I have ever been jealous of'. These eight tales show her gift for transforming fleeting moments - a cha...
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  • REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE
    REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE
    CARSON MCCULLERS
    On a military base in 1930s Georgia, Private Ellgee Williams catches sight of his captain's wife in the nude and becomes obsessed with her. But Captain Penderton - unhappily married to the unfaithful Leonora - in turn erotically fixates on Williams. Spare, muscular and sensual, with the dramatic vision of a Greek myth, Carson McCullers' novella is a timeless work about the alie...
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  • SECRETARY
    SECRETARY
    MARY GAITSKILL
    A writer engulfed by a new obsession, an occasional sex-worker, a runaway, a teenager entering the workplace- these four tales of desire and dislocation explore the rough edges of relationships and the inner lives of women negotiating their precarious place in the world. In these coolly compelling and quietly devastating stories, Gaitskill evokes with razor-sharp precision the ...
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  • NIGHT OWLS
    NIGHT OWLS
    NIKOLAI LESKOV
    'I decided that my trip had evidently been in vain, since nothing of interest could possibly occur on this visit. I was mistaken.' Condemned to sleeplessness by the chatter permeating his guesthouse room, a forlorn traveller turns his ear to the riotous tale spun by the garrulous, meddlesome, inane and utterly unprincipled Marya Mart novna next door. Her exuberant deformations...
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  • HELL
    HELL
    DANTE
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksLay down all hope, you that go in by me . . . Through the gates of Hell, past whirling hurricanes, leering devils and rivers of blood, lies the ultimate evil: Satan himself. Masterfully translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, this first instalment of The Divine Comedy tells the captivating tale of Dante and Virgil's arduous journe...
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  • ALL GOD'S CHILLUN GOT PRIDE
    ALL GOD'S CHILLUN GOT PRIDE
    CHESTER B. HIMES
    Best known for his hardboiled Harlem Detective series, Chester Himes was also a superb literary writer, beginning his creative life by writing short stories in the 1930s while serving jail time for armed robbery. Selected here are some of his best stories - from a satirical tale about a student bet that purportedly disproves the existence of racism in Los Angeles to a chilling ...
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  • THE DRIVER'S SEAT
    THE DRIVER'S SEAT
    MURIEL SPARK
    Muriel Spark claimed The Driver's Seat to be her best and creepiest novel. Once you have met her heroine Lise - heading for the holiday of a lifetime in an extraordinarily garish dress and with violence on her mind - you will understand why. ...
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  • LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER
    LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER
    ROALD DAHL
    No author perfected the twist in the tale better than Roald Dahl. His stories - many of which were filmed as Tales of the Unexpected - take us into a world that is shocking, cruelly funny and always has a sinister edge. What if plants could feel pain? What kind of father would bet his daughter in a wager? And what is the secret behind that delicious lamb dinner...? ...
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  • THE STORY OF AN HOUR
    THE STORY OF AN HOUR
    KATE CHOPIN
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksThere was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name Nuns, maidens, adventurers - with electricity, The Story of an Hour brings together stories of female freedom, as Kate Chopin asks the question: what will emancipation feel like for w...
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