Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete …
"The judgment" is considered the most autobiographical of Kafka's stories. First, there are Kafka's own commentaries and entries in his diary. When he re-read the story, for instance, he noted that on…
Old Masters (subtitled A Comedy) is a novel by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, which was first published in 1985. It tells of the life and opinions of Reger, a ‘musical philosopher’, through the …
Considered by many to be one of Brecht's masterpieces, Galileo explores the question of a scientist's social and ethical responsibility, as the brilliant Galileo must choose between his life and his l…
In 1952, Hannah Arendt hailed Bertolt Brecht as "beyond a doubt the greatest living German poet and possibly the greatest living European playwright." His plays, widely taught and studied, are searing…
White Nights is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, it is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it d…
»Claire Zachanassian, eine amerikanische Multimillionärin, kehrt in ihr Heimatdorf Güllen zurück, um sich zu rächen: Vor Jahrzehnten hat sie aus dem Dorf f…
In the first scene of this provocative gut-punch of a novel, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, a…
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in TH…
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twe…
