A wry, observant masterpiece—one of the singular treasures of the French fin de siècleWritten between the age of twenty-three and his death at age forty-six, Jules Renard's Journal 1887–1910 is a triumph of introspection and wit. One of the most celebrated figures of Belle Époque Paris, Renard was also a prolific diarist whose private musings were first published in five volumes some fifteen years after his death. Acclaimed by everyone from Somerset Maugham...

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Ben Lloyd-Hughes, best known for Divergent, Me Before You and The Inbetweeners. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Michael Wood.Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is ...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging, and exi...

Joris-Karl Huysmans's cult classic of deviance and decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new translation by Theo CuffeA celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel Jean Des Esseintes—disaffected, degenerate, and art obsessed. The last of a proud and noble family, Des Esseintes retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois ...

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Steve John Shepherd, whose theatre credits include Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe, The Good Canary directed by John Malkovich*, Bomber's Moon* and Piaf. His TV and film credits range from the iconic This Life to Silent Witness and Eastenders. This definitive recording includes an introduction by E V Rieu.One of the foremost achievements ...

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more t...

The 30th anniversary edition of the virtuosic, wickedly comic modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, with a new foreword written and read by Michelle Zauner, author of the New York Times bestselling sensation Crying in H Mart.“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other.” —Stephen King, Entertainment WeeklySet in an a...

This audiobook narrated by quantum physicist, New York Times bestselling author, and BBC host Jim Al-Khalili offers an illuminating look at what physics reveals about the worldShining a light on the most profound insights revealed by modern physics, Jim Al-Khalili invites us all to understand what this crucially important science tells us about the universe and the nature of reality itself.Al-Khalili begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of ...

Sartre's greatest novel — and existentialism's key text — now introduced by James Wood.Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which “spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time — the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it...

This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. This book features a table of contents linked to every chapter. The book was designed for optimal navigation on the iPad, Nook, PDA, Smartphone, and other electronic readers. It is formatted to display on all electronic devices including eReaders, Smartphones and other Mobile Devices with a small display. "All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or p...

Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher's immortal narrativ...

**The award-winning, nationally bestselling translation, by Lydia Davis, of one of the world’s most celebrated novels“The best English version by far, because its deadpan reminds us that the book is both a great realist novel and a satire of realism.” —Merve Emre, The New Yorker**Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs in an effort to make her life ...