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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
