Penguin The Ruined Map Abe Kobo

'This is the record of a box man'. Anonymous and alone, the box man peeps out of his cut-out eyeholes and watches the world from behind his four cardboard walls. At first repulsed by the strange phenomenon of people who have decided to abandon society and live in boxes on the Tokyo streets, he has found himself drawn into the anonymity and voyeurism of their life. As he becomes obsessed with spying on a young nurse, his identity slips away, in Kobo Abe's eerie, disorienting and seductive masterpiece of unease

In this unnerving fable from one of Japan's greatest novelists, a recluse known as 'Mole' retreats to a vast underground bunker, only to find that strange guests, booby traps and a giant toilet may prove even greater obstacles than nuclear disaster

A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas • Following the explosive energy of On the Road, the book that put the Beat Genration on the literary map - and Jack Kerouac on the bestseller list - comes The Dharma Bums, in which Kerouac charts the spiritual quest of a group of friends in search of Dharma, or Truth. Ray Smith and his friend Japhy, along with Morley the yodeller, head off into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude and experience the Zen way of life. But in wildly Bohemian San Francisco, with its poetry jam sessions, marathon drinking bouts and experiments in 'yabyum', they find the ascetic route distinctly hard to follow

Twenty-four-year-old Andreas, a disillusioned German soldier, is travelling on a troop train to the Eastern Front when he has an awful premonition that he will die in exactly five days. As he hurtles towards his death, he reflects on the chaos around him - the naive soldiers, the painfully thin girl who pours his coffee, the ruined countryside - with sudden, heart-breaking poignancy. Arriving in Poland the night before he is certain he will die, he meets Olina, a beautiful prostitute, and together they attempt to escape his fate

The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident - a man who has lost his face and, with it, connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him. His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self - a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity, and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order

Penguin Readers is a graded reading series for English Language Teaching (ELT) markets, designed for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign or second language • In Yukon, Canada during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, strong sled dogs are in high demand. Buck is stolen from his comfortable home in California and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. Will he survive life in the wild? • Penguin Readers is a series of the best new fiction, essential non-fiction and popular classics written for learners of English as a foreign language. Beautifully illustrated and carefully adapted, the series introduces language learners around the world to the bestselling authors and most compelling content from Penguin Random House. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework and include language activities that help readers to develop key skills

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad • 'Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world' • In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction written in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels, to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot • If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? • Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie's fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library Edition of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells • 'Death!' I shouted. 'Death is coming! Death!' • In this pioneering, shocking and nightmarish tale, naive suburban Londoners investigate a strange cylinder from space, but are instantly incinerated by an all-destroying heat-ray. Soon, gigantic killing machines that chase and feed on human prey are threatening the whole of humanity. A pioneering work of alien invasion fiction, The War of the World's journalistic style contrasts disturbingly with its horrifying visions of the human race under siege • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases by Arthur Conan Doyle • 'He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson ... He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them' • Sherlock Holmes, scourge of criminals everywhere, whether they be lurking in London's foggy backstreets or plotting behind the walls of an idyllic country mansion, and his faithful colleague Dr Watson, solve these breathtaking and perplexing mysteries. In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases we encounter some of his most famous and devilishly difficult problems • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library edition of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James • 'She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her' • When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her freedom, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond. Charming and cultivated, Osmond sees Isabel as a rich prize waiting to be taken. In this portrait of a 'young woman affronting her destiny', Henry James created one of his most magnificent heroines, and a story of intense poignancy • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Marx and Engels' revolutionary summons to the working classes - one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)