Vintage books Quicksand & Passing Larsen Nella

Childhood friends Clare and Irene are both light-skinned enough to pass as white, but only one of them has chosen to cross the colour line and live with the secret hanging over her. Clare believes she had successfully cut herself off from any connection to her past. Married to a racist white man who is oblivious to her African-American heritage, it is vital to her that the truth remains hidden. Irene is living as a middle-class Black woman with her husband and children in Harlem, taking on an important role in her community and embracing her origins • Both women are forced to re-examine their relationships with each other, with their husbands and with the truth, confronting their most closely guarded fears. Nella Larsen's powerful, tragic and acutely observant writing established her as a lodestar of America's Harlem Renaissance

Clare Kendry has severed all ties to her past. Elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, she is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she renews her acquaintance with her childhood friend Irene, who has not hidden her origins, both women are forced to reassess their marriages, the lies they have told - and to confront the secret fears they have buried within themselves. Nella Larsen's intense, taut and psychologically nuanced portrayal of lives and identities dangerously colliding established her as a leading writer of America's Harlem Renaissance • The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War

Элегантная Клэр Кендри с легкостью вращается в кругах высшего общества Нью-Йорка до того дня, когда она вновь знакомится со своей подругой детства Айрин. Клэр предпочитает "выдавать себя" за белую, скрывая свое афроамериканское происхождение от своего фанатичного мужа, в то время как Айрин ведет жизнь, которая учитывает это. Когда обе женщины наблюдают друг за другом, начинаются отношения взаимного очарования, одержимости и секретов, которые закончатся при разрушительных обстоятельствах • Опубликованный в 1929 году роман Неллы Ларсен "Прохождение" раскрывает сложности идентичности, расы, класса и пола. Повесть сделала Ларсен одной из самых значительных женщин-авторов в американской литературе и считается литературным шедевром эпохи гарлемского ренессанса

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith • Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil • Clare Kendry, elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she reunites with childhood friend Irene, who has not hidden her origins, both women are forced to confront the secret fears they have buried within themselves

Nella, daughter of millionaire Theodore Racksole, orders a dinner of steak and beer at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel in London. Her order is refused, so Theodore promptly buys the chef, the kitchen and the whole hotel. But when hotel staff begin to vanish and a German prince goes missing, Nella discovers that murder, blackmail and kidnapping are also on the menu. A rollicking murder mystery from one of the finest writers of the last century

Jon is 59 and divorced: a senior civil servant in Westminster who hates many of his colleagues and loathes his work, he is a good man in a bad world • Meg is a bankrupt accountant – two words you don’t want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your CV. Living on Telegraph Hill, she can see London unfurl below her. Somewhere out there is safety • As Jon and Meg navigate the sweet and serious heart of London – passing through 24 hours that will change them both for ever – they tell a very unusual, unbearably moving love story

A black maid forms a close bond with the daughter of the cruel white couple for whom she works. Two rich, white artists hire a black model to pose as a slave. A white-passing boy ignores his mother when they cross each other on the street • Written with sardonic wit and a keen eye for the absurdly unjust, these fourteen stories about racial tensions are as relevant today as the day they were penned, and linger in the mind long after the final page is turned

Philip Roth's entire oeuvre - 31 books - to be reissued in electric new Vintage jackets for October 2016 • As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself as 'a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes' - an identity that will cling to him for a lifetime. As Philip Roth follows Kapesh from the domesticity of childhood out into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a menage a trois in London to the depths of loneliness in New York, Kapesh confronts the central dilemma of pleasure: how to make a truce between dignity and desire; and how to survive the ordeal of an unhallowed existence

Creepy. Peculiar. Fairy. Goblin. Liar. Weirdo. Crank. Genius • No one knows what to make of Juliet Slater, not even her mother. And clothes, boys, school, friends, the changing seasons and what other people think - none of these things seem to matter to Juliet. She spends hours in her room with incomprehensible mathematical text books, her mind voyaging in strange seas of thought, alone. Is she a genius? It might take the rest of her life to find out • While Stella Gibbons was celebrated for her beloved bestseller Cold Comfort Farm, the manuscript for Pure Juliet lay unseen and forgotten until it was brought to light by her family in 2014, and is published here for the first time in Vintage Classics. A tale that travels from an eco-millionaire's British country idyll to an Arabian Nights-style fantasy of the Middle East, this is a treat for fans of this witty, curious and always surprising author

Что, если незнакомец, похожий на вас, украл ваше имя, подделал вашу биографию и отправился по миру, выдавая себя за вас? • Поразительно, но Филип Рот встречает в Иерусалиме человека по имени Филип Рот, который путешествует по Израилю, проповедуя странный обратный исход евреев, призывая их вернуться в дома своих предков в Европе. Рот решает остановить его, даже если для этого придется выдать себя за самозванца • Операция "Шейлок" Филипа Рота - это одновременно шпионская история, политический триллер, размышление об идентичности и непостижимое путешествие по нестабильному, пугающему Ближнему Востоку • Книга на английском языке • Philip Roth's entire oeuvre - 31 books - to be reissued in electric new Vintage jackets for October 2016 • 'Subtle, funny and furious' Observer • What if a lookalike stranger stole your name, hijacked your biography, and went about the world pretending to be you? • Startlingly, Philip Roth meets a man in Jerusalem called Philip Roth who has been touring Israel - riding high on the author's reputation - preaching a bizarre reverse-exodus of the Jews, encouraging them to return to their ancestral homes in Europe

The great Icelandic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Halldor Laxness • 'There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life' New York Review of Books • First published in 1946, this is a humane, epic novel set in rural Iceland. Bjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor his family, will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartus's obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever • Written by the Nobel prize-winner dubbed the 'Tolstoy of the North', this is a magnificent portrait of the eerie Icelandic landscape and one man's dogged struggle for independence

In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician - and hundreds just like them - are undergoing Re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal and credentials. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in draconian rules, monitoring behaviour and confiscating treasured books • But when bad weather arrives, followed by the ‘three bitter years’, the intellectuals are abandoned by the regime and left on their own to survive. Divided into four narratives, The Four Books tells the story of the Great Famine, one of China’s most devastating and controversial periods