Penguin Modern Hardbacks – serie

Drawn from fifty years of experimental, ground-breaking verse, this selection, in Ginberg's words ‘summarizes what I deem most honest, most penetrant of my writing’. It includes the major poems ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’, but also important early work, songs, uncollected poems and notes from the author that go beyond his iconic Beat Generation image. Intensely personal and incandescently brilliant, Howl and Other Poems is a core Ginsberg text, and celebrates 'Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!'

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror.An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.