(P/B) THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN
Cioran grapples with the major questions of human existence: birth, death, God, the passing of time, how to relate to others and how to make ourselves get out of bed in the morning. In a series of interlinking aphorisms which are at once pessimistic, poetic and extremely funny, Cioran finds a kind of joy in his own despair, revelling in the absurdity and futility of our existence, and our inability to live in the world..(From the publisher)...
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(P/B) NADJA
The core of Nadja is Breton's complex relationship with an unpredictable and unconventional young woman, 'the extreme limit of the Surrealist aspiration'. Combining autobiographical fact with memory and imagination, Breton both spins one of the most unusual love stories in modern literature and illustrates the notion of 'petrifying coincidence', a cornerstone of Surrealist thought. First published in 1928, Nadja has long been regarded as the most important and influential work to emerge from Surrealism. This edition features Richard Howard...
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(P/B) The Beauty of Everyday Things
The daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects, common things used in commonplace settings. These objects are our constant companions in life. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with respect and even affection. They should be natural and simple, sturdy and safe - the aesthetic result of wholeheartedly fulfilling utilitarian needs. They should, in short, be things of beauty. In an age of feeble and ugly machine-made things, these essays call for us to deepen and transform our...
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(P/B) THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI
Enraptured by a young woman's account of the landscapes of Greece, Henry Miller set off to explore the Grecian countryside with his friend Lawrence Durrell in 1939. In The Colossus of Maroussi he describes drinking from sacred springs, nearly being trampled to death by sheep and encountering the flamboyant Greek poet Katsumbalis, who 'could galvanize the dead with his talk'. This lyrical classic of travel writing represented an epiphany in Miller's life, and is the book he would later cite as his favourite. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) The Half-Finished Heaven
Over the course of his career, Tomas Transtromer - a poet who could look on the barren isolation of Sweden's landscapes and seascapes like no other, and find in them something hauntingly transcendent - emerged as one of the 20th century's essential global voices. By the time he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011, his luminous, almost mystical work had been translated into more than 50 languages. Gathering his poems from the early, nature-focused work to the later poetry's widening of the scope to take in painting, travel, urban life...
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(P/B) POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
'Politics and the English Language' is widely considered Orwell's most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.'All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.'Language is a political issue, and slovenly use of language and cliches make it easier for those in power to deliberately use misleading language to hide ...
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(P/B) THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY (VOLUME 1)
We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated? The first part of Michel Foucault's landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppressing sexuality, led to an explosion of discussion about sex as a separate sphere of life for study and examination. As a result, he argues, we are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) Death in Midsummer
Ten tales of loss and longing, from one Japan's greatest writers. It was the height of summer, and there was anger in the rays of the sun. A summer holiday that turns to tragedy; a moonlit journey to fulfil a wish; a couple's unusual way of making a living; a young lieutenant who ends his life; a night of infidelities. This selection contains nine short stories and one modern Noh play by one of Japan's greatest writers. Selected by Mishima himself for translation, they are by turns tender and delicate, ironic and shocking, showing the stra...
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(P/B) The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt's chilling analysis of the conditions that led to the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes is a warning from history about the fragility of freedom, exploring how propaganda, scapegoats, terror and political isolation all aided the slide towards total domination. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) SS-GB
It is 1941 and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed and the King imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down. But when a body is found in a Mayfair flat, what at first appears to be a routine murder investigation sends him into a world of espionage, deceit and betrayal. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, DEPENDENCY
Following one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest, utterly immersive portrayal of love, friendship, art, ambition and the terrible lure of addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) The Great Transformation
Karl Polanyi's landmark 1944 work is one of the earliest and most powerful critiques of unregulated markets. Tracing the history of capitalism from the great transformation of the industrial revolution onwards, he shows that there has been nothing 'natural' about the market state. Instead of reducing human relations and our environment to mere commodities, the economy must always be embedded in civil society. Describing the 'avalanche of social dislocation' of his time, Polanyi's hugely influential work is a passionate call to protect our ...
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(P/B) NAKED LUNCH
Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored edition incorporating Burroughs' notes on the text, alternate drafts and outtakes from the original. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) METAMORPHOSIS
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, 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, and The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, ...
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(P/B) Society Must Be Defended
Society Must Be Defended is Michel Foucault's devastating critique of the systems of power and control inherent in civilization. Taken from a series of lectures given by Foucault at the College de France in 1975-76, it reveals how war is the foundation of all power relations, and politics ultimately a continuation of battlefield violence. He offers a politically charged re-reading of history, with examples ranging from the Trojan myth to Nazi Germany, to show a continual, 'silent war' between the powerful and the powerless. (From the publi...
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(P/B) THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED
An outrageous hybrid of pulp science fiction, obscene experimental poetry, and manifesto for revolution, The Ticket That Exploded is a last chance antidote to the virus of lies spread by the ad men and con men of the Nova Mob, a call to arms against those driving our planet toward the point of destruction. Like the other two volumes of Burroughs' Cut-Up Trilogy, The Soft Machine and Nova Express, it is today as fresh in its form and as urgent in its message as it has ever been. Edited and introduced by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Har...
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(P/B) THE SOFT MACHINE
A terrifying, surreal space-age odyssey, The Soft Machine initiated Burroughs' Cut-Up Trilogy that includes Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded. The book draws the reader into an unmappable textual space, where nothing is true and everything is permitted, to make a total assault on the colonising powers of planet earth that have turned us all into machines. Edited and introduced by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, this new edition clarifies for the first time the extraordinary history of The Soft Machine's writing and rewrit...
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(P/B) A PERFECT SPY
Magnus Pym - ranking diplomat, consummate Englishman, loving husband, secret agent - has vanished. Has he defected? Gone to ground? As the hunt for Pym intensifies, the secrets of his life are revealed: the people he has loved and betrayed, the unreliable con-man father who made him, the two mentors who moulded and shaped him, and now wish to claim this perfect spy as their own. Described by le Carre as his most autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy is a devastating portrayal of a man who has played different roles for so long, he no long...
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(P/B) SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE
George Orwell wrote, in his words, from 'a desire to see things as they are'. This new collection of his journalism and other writings, including articles, essays, broadcasts, poems, book and film reviews from across his career, shows his unmatched genius for observing the world. Whether discussing Polish immigration or Scottish independence, railing against racism, defending the English language or holding an imaginary conversation with Jonathan Swift, these pieces reveal a clear-eyed, entertaining and eternally relevant chronicler of his...
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(P/B) BOUND FOR GLORY
Chronicling some from the point of view of one of the twentieth century's most influential musicians, Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory includes an introduction by Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors, in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Now I been here an' I been there, Rambled aroun' most everywhere' Bound for Glory is the funny, cynical and earthy autobiography of Woody Guthrie, the father of modern American folk music. He tells of his childhood running wild in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, the tragedies that struck his family and of life on the ope...
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