Vintage Classics – serie

This is the story of a quiet man, destined to be a farmer but who becomes an academic. It is book in which nothing and everything happens and is possibly the greatest novel you've never read.'It's simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But its one of the most fascinating things that you've ever come across' Tom Hanks, TimeWilliam Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death, his colleagues remember him rarely.Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value - of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history - and in doing so reclaims the significance of an individual life.'A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life' Ian McEwan'A brilliant, beautiful, inexorably sad, wise and elegant novel' Nick HornbyINTRODUCED BY JOHN McGAHERN

Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian classic Brave New World predicts – with eerie clarity – a terrifying vision of the future, which feels ever closer to our own reality.'The best science fiction book ever, definitely the most prescient…’ Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus ‘A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it’ Margaret Atwood Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece. WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY MARGARET ATWOOD AND DAVID BRADSHAWA grave warning... Provoking, stimulating, shocking and dazzling' Observer

Solzhenitsyn spent eleven years in labour camps and in exile.This book is his masterwork, based on his own experiences as well as the testimony of some 200 survivors. A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, it chronicles the story of those who dared to oppose Stalin, and for whom the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. A thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power, this edition of The Gulag Archipelago was abridged into one volume at the request of the author.'Helped to bring down an empire. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated' Doris Lessing, Sunday Telegraph'Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece...helped create the world we live in today' Anne ApplebaumWITH AN AFTERWORD BY JORDAN B. PETERSONTHE OFFICIALLY APPROVED ABRIDGEMENT OF THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO VOLUMES I, II & III

One of the greatest pieces of travel and nature writing ever written, this is the true story of a journey to the high Himalayas in search of the snow leopard. In 1973 Matthiessen made the 250-mile trek to the dazzling Tibetan plateau of Dolpo, as part of an expedition to study wild blue sheep. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. But it was also a 'journey of the heart'. Amongst the beauty and indifference of the mountains Matthiessen was searching for solace. He was also searching for a glimpse of a snow leopard, a creature so rarely spotted as to be almost mythical.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD MABEY'A beautiful book, and worthy of the mountains he is among' Paul Theroux

'As we come nearer to Christmas this wondrous book becomes ever more poignant and magical. Once read never forgotten' Michael Morpurgo Every winter, in the days leading up to Christmas, Benedikt walks into the snowy mountains of Iceland to rescue sheep lost in the blizzards.With his dog and his ram by his side, traversing wild snowstorms and crystalline nights, fuelled by endless cups of hot coffee, Benedikt dedicates himself to helping other living beings in need. It is midwinter in the harshest of landscapes, but this is a place of deep belonging and peace – brutal and remorseless yet irresistible and indispensable. It is also a time of peace, filled with the anticipation of that special time of year – the days before Christmas: Advent.This enchanting Icelandic classic of one man’s selfless quest at Christmas time has been newly translated into English for the first time in 90 years.‘I’ve been preparing for winter by reading Advent... A beautiful, fable-like tale' Sarah Perry, Guardian'Every page is a hymn to Iceland, to snow and ice and to winter. It is a true classic in every sense' Annie Worsley, author of Windswept'A deeply comforting midwinter read' Katherine May, author of Wintering‘Gunnar Gunnarsson’s novel is the Icelandic A Christmas Carol’ Vanity FairTRANSLATED BY PHILIP ROUGHTON

A fever-dream journal documenting the making of cinema’s most infamous production, from the world's most infamously visionary director: Werner Herzog. In 1982, the visionary film director, Werner Herzog, released Fitzcarraldo, a lavish film about a would-be rubber baron who pulls a 320-ton steamship over a mountain. Hailed instantly by critics around the globe as a masterpiece, Fitzcarraldo won Herzog the 1982 Outstanding Director Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, affirming Herzog's reputation as one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of his time.Conquest of the Useless is the diary Herzog kept during the making of Fitzcarraldo, compiled from June 1979 to November 1981. Emerging as if out of an Amazonian fever dream during filming, Herzog's writings are an extraordinary documentary unto themselves, providing a glimpse into the mind of a genius during the making of one of his greatest achievements.‘Hypnotic... It is ever tempting to try to fathom [Herzog’s] restless spirit and his determination to challenge fate’ New York Times

Murakami's surreal, mind-bending masterpiece: a sci-fi pastiche and a Utopian fantasy novel ingeniously woven together.A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan. Unicorn skulls and voracious librarians. John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story, post-modern manifesto. All this rolled into one rip-roaring novel, End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami’s international following.Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.‘A remarkable writer...he captures the common ache of contemporary heart and head’ Jay McInerney‘His fantasies, with their easy reference to western pulp fiction and music, retain a beauty of the mind’ GuardianWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

in Bulgakov's allegorical masterpiece of Stalin’s regime the devil is making a personal appearance in Moscow.He is accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order are in disarray. Only the Master, a writer and a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil’s onslaught.‘Stunning, superb...Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest’ Independent‘A masterpiece – a classic of twentieth-century fiction’ New York TimesTRANSLATED BY MICHAEL GLENNY, INTRODUCED BY WILL SELF

Discover this profound account of Huxley's famous experimentation with mescalin that has influenced writers and artists for decades.‘Concise, evocative, wise and, above all, humane, The Doors of Perception is a masterpiece’ Sunday TimesIn 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gram of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. Huxley described his experience with breathtaking immediacy in The Doors of Perception. In its sequel Heaven and Hell, he goes on to explore the history and nature of mysticism. Still bristling with a sense of excitement and discovery, these illuminating and influential writings remain the most fascinating account of the visionary experience ever written.WITH A FOREWORD J.G. BALLARD

This is a volcanic journey into the soul of a winged red monster named Geryon. It is queer coming-of-age love story, a Greek myth retold, and a modern classic.Tormented as a boy by his brother, Geryon escapes to a parallel world of photography. He falls deeply in love with Herakles, a golden young man, who deserts him at the peak of infatuation. So Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, fascinated by his wings, his redness and the fantastic accident of who he is. But all is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by Herakles’ return.Autobiography of Red is a deceptively simple narrative filled with currents of meaning, emotion, and the truth about what it’s like to be red. An extraordinary, modern epic poem - moving, disturbing and delightful.'Totally engrossing' Ocean Vuong'This book is amazing - I haven't discovered any writing in years that's so marvellously disturbing' Alice Munro‘A profound love story...sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender’ Ruth Padel, New York Times Book Review

**NOW A MAJOR FILM**BY THE AUTHOR OF STONERWill Andrews is no academic. He longs for wildness, freedom, hope and vigour. He leaves Harvard and sets out for the West to discover a new way of living.In a small town called Butcher's Crossing he meets a hunter with a story of a lost herd of buffalo in a remote Colorado valley, just waiting to be taken by a team of men brave and crazy enough to find them. Will makes up his mind to be one of those men, but the journey, the killing, harsh conditions and sheer hard luck will test his mind and body to their limits.

Noboru spies on his widowed mother, Fusako Kuroda, as she begins a relationship with Ryuji Tsukazaki, a merchant sailor he idolises as a hero.Set in post-war Yokohama, Japan, in the late 1950s, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea follows thirteen-year-old Noboru and a secret gang of schoolboys who have sworn to reject the adult world as sentimental and corrupt. Under the cold authority of their leader, they train themselves in what they call ‘objectivity,’ suppressing emotion in favour of ruthless judgement.When Ryuji abandons the sea to pursue a settled life with Fusako, Noboru and the boys see this not as love, but as weakness. The sailor they once revered becomes, in their eyes, a traitor to heroic masculinity. Their disillusionment curdles into a calculated plan to restore what they believe is honour.As twentieth-century Japanese historical fiction grounded in the social aftermath of the Second World War, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea builds towards an act of chilling violence, exposing adolescent absolutism, misogyny, and the fragile myth of male heroism.‘Mishima’s greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century’ The Times

'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' GuardianBorn at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child.However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE***A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**WITH A NEW 40TH ANNIVERSARY INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

A masterwork by the incomparable, genre-defying, wondrous Italo Calvino. You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But there is a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero of them all is you, the reader.'Breathtakingly inventive' David Mitchell'A writer of dizzying ambition and variety, each of his stories is a fresh adventure into the possibilities of fiction' Guardian

The book that won Ernest Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature'It's silly not to hope. It's a sin he thought'Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.'The best story Hemingway has written. No page of this beautiful master-work could have been done better or differently' Sunday Times'The writing is as taut, and at the same time as lithe and cunningly played out, as the line on which the old man plays the fish' Guardian

'You are the knife I turn inside myself'Franz Kafka's letters to his one-time muse, Milena Jesenska - an intimate window into the desires and hopes of the twentieth-century's most prophetic and important writerKafka first made the acquaintance of Milena Jesenska in 1920 when she was translating his early short prose into Czech. Their relationship quickly developed into a deep attachment. Such was his feeling for her that Kafka showed her his diaries and, in doing so, laid bare his heart and his conscience.While at times Milena's 'genius for living' gave Kafka new life, it ultimately exhausted him, and their relationship was to last little over two years. In 1924 Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna, and Milena died in 1944 at the hands of the Nazis, leaving these letters as a moving record of their relationship.

SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation, now available in a beautiful hardback gift edition.Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CUREDiscover the reader obsession.**Orlanda, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**

The classic political study of how elite forces shape mass media.Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky investigate how an underlying elite consensus structures mainstream media. Here they skilfully dissect the way in which the marketplace and the economics of publishing significantly shape the news.This book reveals how issues are framed and topics chosen, and the double standards underlying accounts of free elections, a free press, and governmental repression between Nicaragua and El Salvador; between the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the American invasion of Vietnam; between the genocide in Cambodia under a pro-American government and genocide under Pol Pot.What emerges from this ground-breaking work is an account of just how propagandistic our mass media can be, and how we can learn to read them and see their function in a radically new way.

After years teaching Romantic poetry in Cape Town, David Lurie has an impulsive affair with a student.The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy’s isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter’s influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.'A great novel by one of the finest authors writing in the English language today' The Times'At the frontier of world literature' Sunday Telegraph**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

The unparalleled short story collection by the great Raymond Carver, master of spare, powerful prose and one of the great American short story writers. This powerful collection of stories is set in the mid-West among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time. In the opening story a man whose wife and children have left him, rearranges all his furniture on the lawn. And in each subsequent story sadness, pain and drudgery propel the characters towards their fate. But through the darkness, vivid colloquial narration and a razor-sharp sense of how people really communicate illuminate all the comedy and tragedy of ordinary life.‘The master craftsman of the modern American short story’ Daily Telegraph‘One of America's most original, truest voices’ Salman Rushdie'The most celebrated story collection from one of the true American masters' New York Review of Books

Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert.As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer’s work, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But we also gradually come to learn some important and shocking details about Geoffrey himself.A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour-de-force of seductive originality.‘Unputdownable... A mesmeric original’ Philip Larkin‘Delightful and enriching...a book to revel in!’ Joseph Heller‘A wry and graceful book... Unfailingly sharp and often very funny’ Sunday TimesWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR TO MARK THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST PUBLICATION

‘Black satire of the highest polish’ GuardianWhilst awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison, Howard W. Campbell Jr sets down his memoirs on an old German typewriter. He has used such a typewriter before, when he worked as a Nazi propagandist under Goebbels. Though that was before he agreed to become a spy for US military. Is Howard guilty? Can a black or white verdict ever be reached in a world that’s a gazillion shades of grey?‘After Vonnegut, everything else seems a bit tame’ Spectator

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch...

In a future London, governed by genetic engineering , Bernard Marx begins to question a society that has abolished family, privacy, and history in the name of stability.In the World State, citizens are conditioned from birth and kept docile through consumerism and the drug, Soma. But when Bernard encounters John, a man raised outside this system, the fragile logic of enforced happiness begins to fracture.Through Bernard Marx and John, Huxley examines freedom, moral responsibility, and the human need for meaning.This classic work of dystopian literary fiction explores identity, alienation, and the suppression of individuality within a world engineered for obedience.'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood'A grave warning... Provoking, stimulating, shocking and dazzling' Observer.**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

A complex, intense American novel of family from the winner of the Nobel Prize for LiteratureWith an introduction by Richard HughesEver since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, The Sound and the Fury has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, the novel explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart, this is a novel about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'

The first collection of stories by the great master of the short story form, Raymond Carver. In the title story a man starts to suspect his wife has been unfaithful to him and his delicate grip on normality begins to disintegrate. In ‘Fat’ a waitress at a diner is changed by the large man she serves. In each story in this collection ordinary characters reveal themselves, sounding and feeling as real as living, breathing humans. Carver’s magnificently simple prose gives us mini worlds with great power, as full of pain, heart and feeling as real life. This, his first collection, transformed the American short story.'Carver has made himself the natural successor to his true mentor, Chekhov' Financial Times‘Carver is a master of the clear, sharp, resonant detail’ Daily Telegraph‘Carver's stories conjure up a quality of fellow feeling which gives the stories a compelling, dry-eyed poignancy, a melancholy but intensely moving authenticity’ William Boyd

Oedipa Maas has been made executrix of her former lover’s estate.The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the crying of lot 49.Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humour, The Crying of Lot 49 is by far the shortest of Pynchon’s great, dazzling novels – and one of his most iconic.‘The best American novel I have read since the war’ Frank Kermode‘Remarkable... The Crying of Lot 49 resembles metaphysical poetry in the range of its allusions and the curiosity of its creator’ Washington Post

Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio. Unloved, unseen, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes. In this way she dreams of becoming beautiful, of becoming someone – like her white schoolfellows – worthy of care and attention. Immersing us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression Ohio, Toni Morrison’s indelible debut reveals the nightmare at the heart of Pecola’s yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfilment.**AS FEATURED IN OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB**'She revealed the sins of her nation, while profoundly elevating its canon. She suffused the telling of blackness with beauty, whilst steering us away from the perils of the white gaze. That's why she told her stories. And why we will never, ever stop reading them' Afua Hirsch'Discovering a writer like Toni Morrison is rarest of pleasures' Washington Post'When she arrived, with her first novel, The Bluest Eye, she immediately re-ordered the American literary landscape' Ben OkriWinner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

'The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American' Ian McEwan, Sunday Times bestselling author of LessonsInto the intrigue and violence of 1950s Saigon comes CIA agent Alden Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'.As Pyle's naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as Fowler intervenes he wonders why: for the greater good, or something altogether more complicated?WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZADIE SMITH**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**