Bücher der Reihe Penguin Modern Classics

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World''Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past' Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.

THE PEARL is Steinbeck's flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting simplicty and lyrical simplicity, THE PEARL sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

A cultural landmark and the most shocking novel in the English language, Naked Lunch is an exhilarating ride into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. An unnerving tale of an addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, Naked Lunch's formal innovation, formerly taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution has exerted its influence authors like Thomas Pynchon and J. G. Ballard; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media in general.

NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES 'Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.'America, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The winning Axis powers have divided their spoils: the Nazis control New York, while California is ruled by the Japanese. But between these two states - locked in a cold war - lies a neutal buffer zone in which legendary author Hawthorne Abendsen is rumoured to live. Abendsen lives in fear of his life for he has written a book in which World War Two was won by the Allies. . .

'How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times' Washington PostHannah 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. 'A non-fiction bookend to Nineteen Eighty-Four' The New York Times'The political theorist who wrote about the Nazis and the 'banality of evil' has become a surprise bestseller' Guardian

'One of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time' Margaret DrabbleTo the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family, the Ramseys, whose annual summer holiday in Scotland falls under the shadow of war, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. The novel's use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives it an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of all that had gone before.Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Hermione Lee

One of Evelyn Waugh's most exuberant comedies, Scoop is a brilliantly irreverent satire of Fleet Street and its hectic pursuit of hot news. Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of The Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner party tip from Mrs Algernon Stitch, he feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising little war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. But for, pale, ineffectual William Boot, editor of the Daily Beast's 'nature notes' column, being mistaken for a competent journalist may prove to be a fatal error...If you enjoyed Scoop, you might like Waugh's Decline and Fall, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Waugh at the mid-season point of his perfect pitch'Christopher Hitchens

'One of those books that haunts you for the rest of your life' Sunday TimesWhen a freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth's population blind, Bill Masen is one of the lucky few to retain his sight. The London he walks is crammed with groups of men and women needing help, some ready to prey on those who can still see. But another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop their spread the Triffids, mobile plants with lethal stingers and carnivorous appetites, seem set to take control.The Day of the Triffids is perhaps the most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century and its startling imagery of desolate streets and lurching, lethal plant life retains its power to haunt today.

Both devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience - and one of the great twentieth-century London novels. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Susheila Nasta.At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver and shows him the ropes. In this strange, cold and foggy city where the natives can be less than friendly at the sight of a black face, has Galahad met his Waterloo? But the irrepressible newcomer cannot be cast down. He and all the other lonely new Londoners - from shiftless Cap to Tolroy, whose family has descended on him from Jamaica - must try to create a new life for themselves. As pessimistic 'old veteran' Moses watches their attempts, they gradually learn to survive and come to love the heady excitements of London.Sam Selvon (b. 1923) was born in San Fernando, Trinidad. In 1950 Selvon left Trinidad for the UK where after hard times of survival he established himself as a writer with A Brighter Sun (1952), An Island is a World (1955), The Lonely Londoners (1956), Ways of Sunlight (1957), Turn Again Tiger (1958), I Hear Thunder (1963), The Housing Lark (1965), The Plains of Caroni (1970), Moses Ascending (1975) and Moses Migrating (1983).If you enjoyed The Lonely Londoners, you might like Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark or Shiva Naipaul's Fireflies, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'His Lonely Londoners has acquired a classics status since it appeared in 1956 as the definitive novel about London's West Indians'Financial Times'The unforgettable picaresque ... a vernacular comedy of pathos'Guardian

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.' Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists of Cannery Row in Monterey, California, during the Great Depression. They want to throw a party for their friend Doc, so Mack and the boys set about, in their own inimitable way, recruiting everyone in the neighbourhood to the cause. But along the way they can't help but get involved in a little mischief and misadventure. It wouldn't be Cannery Row if it was otherwise, now would it?Packed with a ramshackle joi de vivre, Cannery Row is Steinback's high-spirited tribute to his native California.'Uninhibited, bawdy, compassionate, inquisitive, deeply intelligent' Daily Telegraph

From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. He became identified in the white press as a teacher of race hatred. This autobiography reveals his integrity and the fierce idealism which led him to reject both liberal hypocrisies and black racialism.

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.First published in 1955, The Chrysalids is a post-nuclear story of genetic mutation in a devastated world, which tells of the lengths the intolerant will go to to keep themselves pure.David Strorm's father doesn't approve of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them blasphemies against nature. Little does he realize that his own son, his niece Rosalind and their friends, have their own secret aberration which would label them as mutants. But as David and Rosalind grow older it becomes more difficult to conceal their differences from the village elders. Soon they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badlands ...

It is the Day of the Dead. The fiesta in full swing. In the shadow of Popocatepeti ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate...and the ugly pariah dogs roam the streets. Geoffrey Firmin, HM ex-consul, is drowning himself in liquor and Mescal, while his ex-wife and half brother look on powerless to help him. As the day wears on, it becomes apparent that Geoffrey must die. It is his only escape from a world he cannot understand. UNDER THE VOLCANO is one of the century's great undisputed masterpieces.

'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine ... You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent' Martin Amis, ObserverPoet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures. Filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 starring James Mason and Peter Sellers, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne starring Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith, Lolita has lost none of its power to shock and awe.

This collection of letters forms a fascinating day-by-day account of Steinbeck's writing of EAST OF EDEN, his longest and most ambitious novel. The letters, ranging over many subjects - textual discussion, trial flights of workmanship, family matters - provide an illuminating perspective on Steinbeck, the creative genius, and a private glimpse of Steinbeck, the man.

The electrifying first novel from James Baldwin, whose life and words are immortalized in the Oscar-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro'I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.'Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind. 'A beautiful, enduring, spirtual song of a novel' Andrew O'Hagan'With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details, Mr. Baldwin has told his feverish story' The New York Times

Surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs.

The inspiration for the film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins'Achingly beautiful' Guardian Harlem in the 1970s: the black soul of New York City. Tish is nineteen and the man she loves - her lifelong friend and the father of her unborn child - has been jailed for a crime he did not commit. As their families come together to fight for his freedom, will their love be enough?'Soulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten "e;the black experience"e; into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life - but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It's one of the signature lessons of Baldwin's work that blackness contains multitudes' Vanity Fair'If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family' Joyce Carol Oates

It's 1959 and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, 'after you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate'.Includes an afterword by the author.

As Minister for Culture, the Honourable M. A. Nanga is 'a man of the people', as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. At first, the contrast between Nanga and Odili, a former pupil who is visiting the ministry, appears huge. But in the 'eat-and-let-eat' atmosphere, Odili's idealism soon collides with his lusts - and the two men's personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria's first attempted coup in 1966, A Man of the People is an essential part of his body of work dealing with modern African history.

Presents a story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. This novel presents a panorama of human life - from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction to the philosopher who becomes a pirate.

When shy young heir Patrick is orphaned at the age of ten, the only family he has is his wealthy and eccentric aunt, a New York socialite named Mame. Prone to dramatic costumes, flights of fancy and expensive whims, Mame will raise Patrick the only way she knows how - with humour, mishaps, unforgettable friends and lots of love. From progressive schooling and Mame's search for a husband to her short-lived literary career and the puncturing of some of Patrick's romances, Auntie Mame is the most magnificent and hilarious work of love, style, wit and the life of a modern American.

A novel that tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. It includes such creations as: Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; and Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation.