The last book published during Kafka's lifetime, A Hunger Artist (1924) explores many of the themes that were close to him: spiritual poverty, asceticism, futility, and the alienation of the modern ar…
From start to finish, "The Nightingale and the Rose" is a story about the nature of love. A nightingale overhears a student complaining that his professor's daughter will not dance with him, as he is u…
Written originally in French in 1892, Wilde's one-act tragedy Salomé was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas, inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations (long available in a D…
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) may have suffered an untimely death, but he squeezed the most out of his 44 years of life. Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be one o…
Part of the Penguin 60s series, issued to celebrate 60 years of Penguin books. This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 19…
A short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky written in 1877. It begins with a man walking St. Petersburg's streets while musing upon how ridiculous his life is, as well as its distinct lack of meaning or purp…
A romance with a sailor gives Eveline a chance to escape from her dreary life caring for her widowered father, but when the time comes she hesitates to take the plunge
When Prince Oroonoko's passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko's noble…
The Unnamable consists entirely of a disjointed monologue from the perspective of an unnamed (presumably unnamable) and immobile protagonist. There is no concrete plot or setting - and whether the oth…
Published the same year as her first novel, Adam Bede, this overlooked work displays the gifts for which George Eliot would become famous—gritty realism, psychological insight,…
In these four stories, Kate Chopin subtly captures the intricate interior lives of a generation of women. From the famous proto-feminist tale "The Story of an Hour" to the subtly sexy "A Respectable W…
