198 x 129 mm

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (Penguin Modern Classics) — one of the great American novellas, a portrait of the elusive Holly Golightly in prose as polished and precise as anything Capote wrote. Includes three further stories — ‘House of Flowers’, ‘A Diamond Guitar’, and ‘A Christmas Memory’ — making this the ideal introduction to Capote’s short fiction at its most accomplished. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (Penguin Modern Classics) — one of the great satirical novels of the twentieth century, in which a fictional religion called Bokononism, a Caribbean dictator, and a substance called ice-nine converge on the end of the world with hilarious and devastating results. Funnier than it has any right to be about the end of everything. Essential Vonnegut. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Star by Yukio Mishima (Penguin) — a short, brilliant novella in which a young film star discovers that celebrity has made him a surface onto which audiences project what they need, while behind the screen there is less and less of him. A contemporary, darkly satirical Mishima — neglected until now, and essential for anyone who wants to understand his full range. Published by Penguin.

The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector (Penguin Modern Classics) — Lispector’s third novel follows Lucrécia Neves as a new road transforms her small Brazilian town, in a novel about consciousness and place written in a prose style of radical formal ambition. One of the most formally adventurous works of its era, now finally available in English. Essential Lispector. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac (Penguin Modern Classics) — Kerouac’s most spiritually sincere novel, replacing the horizontal motion of On the Road with the vertical discipline of mountain climbing and Zen meditation. His portrait of the poet Gary Snyder as Japhy Ryder remains one of American literature’s most convincing portraits of how a person can be fully, completely alive. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima (Penguin Modern Classics) — a darkly comic, satirical novel in which a young man places an advertisement offering to live anyone else’s life for a price. Mishima at his most playful and his most philosophically serious about identity — proof of his extraordinary range. Newly available in English for the first time. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Philosophy in the Bedroom by the Marquis de Sade (Penguin) — the most philosophically explicit of de Sade’s works, presenting his radical libertine philosophy through a dialogic structure that combines argument and narrative. Essential for serious students of the European radical Enlightenment, the history of ideas, and the limits of philosophical reason. Published by Penguin.