The poets in this book are philosophers and statesmen; priestesses and warriors; teenage girls, concerned for their birthday celebrations; drunkards and brawlers; grumpy old men and chic young things. They speak of hopes, fears, loves, losses, triumphs and humiliations. Every one of them lived and died between 1,900 and 2,800 years ago. The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse is a volume without precedent. It brings together the best of two...
"Feminist skepticism of a canon is healthy. To Gay, a feminist canon is subjective and always evolving, and represents a long history of feminist scholarship. Ten years after her New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay edits The Portable Feminist Reader for Penguin Classics, an anthology of texts that are diverse in feminist thought, strikingly relevant, and dynamic. Sixty-five selections include ancient, historic, and...
"A collection of twelve essential short stories by iconic American women writers that introduces a more diverse canon and emphasizes non-white and queer writers to better represent the experiences of all American women and to understand the importance of the short story for women"-- Provided by publisher.
"Deep in the mountain forests of Guatemala, a community of indigenous Mayans-the "men of maize"-serves as stewards to sacred corn crops. When outsiders encroach on their territory and threaten to abuse the fertile land, they enter a bloody struggle to protect their way of life. This 75th anniversary edition of Nobel Prize Winner Miguel Ángel Asturias's epic tale of the collision of capitalist exploitation and indigenous wisdom features a new introduction...
"One of the earliest works of Greek philosophy, Meditations is a collection of deep insights into the complexities of human emotions. In his exemplary work, Marcus Aurelius expresses his gratitude to the ones from whom he learnt important qualities and lessons in life. He reflects over a wide range of subjects including the mind and thoughts, life and death, goodness, self-judgement, leadership. Told through the story of five emperors, Aurelius offer...
"The first and only comprehensive collection of writings by Elizabeth Garver Jordan, the groundbreaking journalist, suffragist, and editor whose fearless reporting on women preceded the #MeToo movement and popularized the true-crime genre. A Penguin Classic The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings is the first to collect Garver Jordan's fiction and journalism, much of which has been out of print for over a century. Jordan began her career as a...
"A favorite of longtime Harry Crews fans, The Knockout Artist (1988) portrays Eugene Talmadge Biggs, a young boxer from rural Georgia whose champion rise is diverted by a vulnerability, or gift, for knocking himself unconscious. As he begins to exploit his talents, the notorious Knockout Artist journeys a hero's descent into the New Orleans underworld and meets characters who have long since checked their morals at the door. The unforgettable climax...
"This anthology presents a new vision that recovers and reframes the literature produced by the people targeted by the actions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress to deny Americans of Japanese ancestry any individual hearings or other due process after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. From nearly seventy selections of fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, and letters emerges a shared story of the struggle to retain personal integrity in...
"There is no other anthology that brings together similar stories of ancient women in power. These women threaten male power by stepping into the roles traditionally held by men. They command armies, exercise sexual autonomy and even dominance, speak in public, issue laws, and subject others (even masculine heroes and citizen men) to their control. All of these stories were written by men, and none of them can be read as affirmations or celebrations...
A new selection of foundational works from the influential philosopher who developed the theory of mimetic desire. Rene Girard eludes easy categories, bridging the fields of literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, history, religion and theology. Influencing such writers as J. M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera, his insight into contagious violence looks ever more prophetic and relevant seven years after his death. In many ways he is the thinker for...
"One of Cuba's-and Latin America's-greatest historical novels, about imperial conquest carried out under the guise of liberation, in its first new English translation in sixty years and featuring a new foreword by Alejandro Zambra. When he arrives in Cuba at the close of the eighteenth century, Victor Hugues, a merchant sailor from Marseille, brings with him not only the idealism of the French Revolution but also its ambition and bloodlust. Landing...
"Essays, speeches, and letters on constitution ratification, pardoning powers, the Bank of the U.S., and foreign policy illuminate not only Hamilton's legacy but his compelling engagement with Madison, Jefferson, and Adams, and his legendary conflict with Burr. A Penguin Classic With the Penguin Liberty series by Penguin Classics, we look to the U.S. Constitution's text and values, as well as to American history and some of the country's most important...
"Dissatisfied with his empty, Sisyphus-like existence in New York City, where he has abandoned his creative dreams for a job in corporate advertising, a highly cultured aspiring composer wants nothing more than to tear his life up from the root. He soon finds his escape hatch: a university-sponsored mission to South America to look for indigenous musical instruments in one of the few areas of the world not yet touched by civilization. Retracing the...
"These are not the usual suspects. When Edgar finalist Michael Sims formed the line-up for The Penguin Book of Murder, he did not include the familiar classics that you can find anywhere. Although he wanted to explore the first century of murder mysteries (from 1827 to 1924), he sought out the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and a few little-known gems by famous practitioners. The mystery of a bloody murder has been a perennially classic theme,...
"An eerie, alienating, yet comic and profoundly sympathetic short story collection about Americans in America by one of Indonesia's most prominent writers, now in an English translation for its fortieth anniversary, with a foreword by Intan Paramaditha"-- Provided by publisher.
"One of the first science-fiction utopian stories and one of the first feminist utopias by India's widely celebrated, pioneering feminist, educator, writer, and activist Rokeya Hossain A Penguin Classics Edition Sultana, a Muslim woman living in contemporary India, falls asleep and wakes up in a transformed future world: a utopia in which men rather than women are relegated to the domestic sphere. Women, now free to explore the outside world at will...
"The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism and selected correspondences, including over thirty previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Portable Anna Julia Cooper will introduce a new generation of readers to an educator, public intellectual, and...
"A sparkling new translation that gives new life in English to Dante's Vita Nuova, his transcendent love poems and influential statement on the art and power of poetry, and the most widely read of his works after the Inferno. A Penguin Classic. Dante was only nine years old when he first met young Beatrice in Florence. Loving her for the rest of his life with a devotion undiminished by even her untimely death, he would dedicate himself to transfiguring...
"The groundbreaking feminist and socialist writings of Puerto Rican author and activist Luisa Capetillo. In 1915, Puerto Rican activist Luisa Capetillo was arrested and acquitted for being the first woman to wear men's trousers publicly. While this act of gender-nonconforming rebellion elevated her to feminist icon status in modern pop culture, it also overshadowed the significant contributions she made to the women's movement and anarchist labor...