Серия книг «Penguin Modern Classics» — 406 книг

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, published in the United States as The War of Dreams, is a 1972 novel by Angela Carter. This picaresque novel is heavily influenced by surrealism, Romanticism, critical theory and other branches of Continental philosophy. Its style is an amalgam of magical realism and postmodern pastiche. The novel has been called a theoretical fiction, as it clearly engages in some of the theoretical issues of its time, notably feminism, mass media and the counterculture.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, published in the United States as The War of Dreams, is a 1972 novel by Angela Carter. This picaresque novel is heavily influenced…

'...We were sitting on the porch, tutti-frutti melting on our plates, when suddenly, just as we were wishing that something would happen, something did; for out of the red road dust appeared Miss Bobbit.'Truman Capote's bewitching short stories, many of which were set in the Deep South of his youth, are among his finest works. Perceptive, sensitive and eloquent, filled with brooding atmosphere and gorgeous description, these three stories tell of genteel eccentrics, evocative childhood memories and a malevolent nocturnal meeting.This book includes Children on Their Birthdays, A Christmas Memory and A Tree of Night.

'...We were sitting on the porch, tutti-frutti melting on our plates, when suddenly, just as we were wishing that something would happen, something did; for out of the red road…

The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures, in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this late Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers.

If you enjoyed The Secret Pilgrim, you might like le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered…

Barley Blair is not a Service man: he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky and jazz. But it was Barley who, one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair, was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began, and made a promise. Nearly a year later, his drunken promise returns to haunt him. A reluctant Barley is quickly trained by British Intelligence and sent to Moscow to liaise with a go-between, the beautiful Katya. Both are lonely and disillusioned. Each is increasingly certain that if the human race is to have any future, all must betray their countries ? In his first post-glasnost spy novel, le Carre captures the effect of a slow and uncertain thaw on ordinary people and on the shadowy puppet-masters who command them.

Barley Blair is not a Service man: he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky and jazz. But it was Barley who, one drunken night at a dacha…

Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. As Smiley probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second George Smiley novel, le Carre moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with Smiley as master detective.

Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George…

"He created his own universe and became its star". (David Cronenberg, "Guardian"). Andy Warhol carried a camera with him everywhere he went and, taken from ten years of extraordinary shots, his America aspires to the strange beauty and staggering contradictions of the country itself. Exploring his greatest obsessions - including image and celebrity - he photographs wrestlers and politicians, the beautiful wealthy and the disenfranchised poor, Capote with the fresh scars of a facelift and Madonna hiding beneath a brunette bob. He writes about the country he loves, wishing he had died when he was shot, commercialism, fame and beauty. An America without Warhol is almost as inconceivable as Warhol without America, and this touching, witty tribute is the great artist of the superficial at his most deeply personal.

"He created his own universe and became its star". (David Cronenberg, "Guardian"). Andy Warhol carried a camera with him everywhere he went and, taken from ten years of…

Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome precis of impossible worlds or imaginary books. In these five stories there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopaedia of an unknown planet - and Borges's unique imagination and intellect play throughout.

Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome precis of impossible worlds or imaginary books. In…

Laurence is a young ex-sailor who can't resist the lure of the good life, and when he finds a job as chauffeur to the wealthy Mr and Mrs Bannister, his occasional work leaves him free to indulge. Bannister himself is bitter - his twisted leg keeps him on the sidelines while his ravishingly beautiful wife endures his moods with saintly patience. Or does she? It's the Bannisters' closest friend, Grisby, who starts stirring, getting Laurence to agree to a crazy plot. It will net him thousands, no strings attached. But is it all too easy?

Laurence is a young ex-sailor who can't resist the lure of the good life, and when he finds a job as chauffeur to the wealthy Mr and Mrs Bannister, his occasional work leaves him…

"I am not an expert on sex, but I was a good student of the women I loved, and I'll try to recall those happy and unhappy experiences which, I believe, made a man out of me," writes the narrator of this novel. Originally published by the author himself in 1965, "In Praise of Older Women" became an international bestseller and renowned classic, and its title is now part of the language.

"I am not an expert on sex, but I was a good student of the women I loved, and I'll try to recall those happy and unhappy experiences which, I believe, made a man out of me,"…

Alex Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final assignment.
He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas's mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done.

Alex Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He has seen too many good agents…

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional…

Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his death. The surviving drafts explore the concepts of Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude and Visibility (Constancy was to be the sixth) in serious yet playful essays that reveal Calvino's debt to the comic strip and the folktale. With his customary imagination and grace, he sought to define the virtues of the great literature of the past in order to shape the values of the future. This collection is a brilliant précis of the work of a great writer whose legacy will endure through the millennium he addressed.

Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his death. The surviving drafts explore the concepts of…

In 1949, two young Cuban musicians, brothers Cesar and Nestor, leave Havana for New York. By day they work hard, by night they are the Mambo Kings: packing out clubs, dance halls and theatres with their sensuous, pulsing Latin music. This is the captivating story of charming, vivacious womanizer Cesar and quiet, romantic Nestor - still nursing an unrequited love for 'beautiful Maria of my soul' - and their changing fortunes as they try to make it big in America.

In 1949, two young Cuban musicians, brothers Cesar and Nestor, leave Havana for New York. By day they work hard, by night they are the Mambo Kings: packing out clubs, dance halls…

‘Demonstrates the birth of a writer: the door cracking open, the eye flashing, risking its every breath to see’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘Interzone’ shows the evolution of William Burroughs from the terse, fiercely confessional writer of Junky to the wild, brutal fantasist of ‘Naked Lunch’. In writings on severing the last joint of a little finger (as Burroughs did his own), on life in Tangiers, on legs found in a suitcase and a Christmas miracle for a junky, on a cruel futuristic city of rusted metal, on the abuses of drugs and of sex, from his very first attempt at fiction to the frenzied, obscene ‘WORD’, Burroughs finds his unmistakable, inimitable voice here.

‘An essential text: the statement of a man writing for his life, a venting, a bloodletting’ Bloomsbury Review

‘Demonstrates the birth of a writer: the door cracking open, the eye flashing, risking its every breath to see’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘Interzone’ shows the evolution of…

A gangster is murdered during a blistering Manhattan heat wave. City cop Andy Rusch is under pressure solve the crime and captivated by the victim’s beautiful girlfriend. But it is difficult to catch a killer, let alone get the girl, in crazy streets crammed full of people. The planet’s population has exploded. The 35 million inhabitants of New York City run their TVs off pedal power, riot for water, loot and trample for lentil ‘steaks’ and are controlled by sinister barbed wire dropped from the sky. Written in 1966 and set in 1999, Make Room! Make Room! is a witty and unnerving story about stretching the earth’s resources, and the human spirit, to breaking point.

A gangster is murdered during a blistering Manhattan heat wave. City cop Andy Rusch is under pressure solve the crime and captivated by the victim’s beautiful girlfriend. But it…

‘Burroughs’s contact with cats put him in touch with himself’ Harper’s Bazaar

There is an unexpected side to William Burroughs: the author of weird and disturbing fictions had a great fondness for cats. This is his earnest appreciation of the cats he knew, a record of his dreams of cats, and a meditation on the long, mysterious relationship between cats and their human hosts. In ‘The Cat Inside’, Burroughs is touching when writing of the many strays he took in over the years, disdainful of dogs (‘self-righteous as a lynch mob’), always erudite and surprisingly caring − it is a genuine revelation, for Burroughs fans and cat lovers alike.

‘Heartwarming anecdotes. Burroughs ventures galaxies away from his usual twisted literary turf’ Time

‘Burroughs’s contact with cats put him in touch with himself’ Harper’s Bazaar

There is an unexpected side to William Burroughs: the author of weird and disturbing fictions had…

In 1941, Rob Coram is six. The war feels far removed from his world of aunties and cousins and the beautiful, dry landscape of Geraldton in Western Australia. But when his favourite, older cousin, Rick, leaves to join the army, the war takes a step closer.

When Rick returns from the war several years later, he has changed and Rob feels betrayed. The old merry-go-round that represents Rob's dream of utopia (the security of his family and of the land that is his home) begins to disintegrate before his eyes.

In 1941, Rob Coram is six. The war feels far removed from his world of aunties and cousins and the beautiful, dry landscape of Geraldton in Western Australia. But when his…

"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 happy family life and Southern gentility gradually slips away as unpleasant truths emerge and greed, lies, jealousy and suppressed sexuality threaten to reach boiling point. Made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" is a masterly portrayal of family tensions and individuals trapped in prisons of their own making.

"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,…

"The Sheltering Sky" is a book about people on the edge of an alien space; somewhere where, curiously, they are never alone' - Michael Hoffman. Port and Kit Moresbury, a sophisticated American couple, are finding it more than a little difficult to live with each other. Endeavoring to escape this predicament, they set off for North Africa intending to travel through Algeria - uncertain of exactly where they are heading, but determined to leave the modern world behind. The results of this casually taken decision are both tragic and compelling.

"The Sheltering Sky" is a book about people on the edge of an alien space; somewhere where, curiously, they are never alone' - Michael Hoffman. Port and Kit Moresbury, a…

English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of Turkish police inspector Colonel Haki. It is from him that he first hears of the mysterious Dimitrios - an infamous master criminal, long wanted by the law, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Fascinated by the story, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios' steps across Europe to gather material for a new book. But, as he gradually discovers more about his subject's shadowy history, fascination tips over into obsession. And, in entering Dimitrios' criminal underworld, Latimer realizes that his own life may be on the line.

English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of Turkish police inspector Colonel Haki. It is from him that he first hears of the…