Book picks similar to
Flypaper by Robert Musil
short-stories
penguin-mini-modern-classics
fiction
literature
Through the Wall
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - 2009
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has been acclaimed as one of Russia's greatest living writers. These five dreamlike and blackly comic stories, two of which are here in English for the first time, tell of lost children, midnight forests, strange transformations, cruel curses, grief and resilience, in the darkest of modern fairy tales. This book contains "Through the Wall" and "Anna and Maria".
The Strange Crime Of John Boulnois
G.K. Chesterton - 2011
K. Chesterton's Father Brown is both a diminuitive, genial clergyman and a master sleuth. In these two stories involving the ingenious, unobtrusive priest, a murdered man denounces his killer with his dying breaths, and a brilliant French inspector follows a trail of carnage across London.
The Gifts of War
Margaret Drabble - 2011
In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany.
The Magic Paint
Primo Levi - 2011
It includes: 'The Magic Paint', 'The Death of Marinese', 'Censorship in Bitinia', and 'Knall'.
The Mark-2 Wife
William Trevor - 2011
but all of a sudden there are newer and better gadgets in the shops.More up-to-date models."William Trevor has been acclaimed as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language, likened to Chekhov for his insights into human nature. These three tales of obsession, heartbreak, silent sorrow and the small tragedies of ordinary lives are profound, immaculate and beautiful.This book includes The Mark-2 Wife, The Time of Year and Cheating at Canasta.
The Expelled
Samuel Beckett - 2011
In these two stories, the pains of companionship, and of loneliness and of the human body are starkly explored.
The Queen's Necklace
Italo Calvino - 2011
Italo Calvino's writing explores the fringes of these small, unusual scenes and finds incalculable wisdom and humour there.This book contains The Queen's Necklace and The Workshop Hen.
Dear Illusion
Kingsley Amis - 1962
But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.'
Rich In Russia
John Updike - 2011
The writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything – from his meals to his bugged hotel room – is already paid for, and then to RumaniaThis book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.
The Sexes
Dorothy Parker - 1944
Includes such stories as: 'The Sexes', 'The Lovely Leave', 'The Little Hours', 'Glory in the Daytime' and 'Lolita'.
Lunar Caustic
Malcolm Lowry - 1963
When he arrives to New York, finds that everything in his life have been sinking and losses, like his own band and his companion, Ruth. His pilgrimage by the taverns of the city port culminates in a psychiatric hospital, in fact a hell, or a stranded boat, depending on how you look, a prison, where hell share his time and fortune with sailors, drunken, poor and solemnity characters like the old Kalowsky evicted, the young Garry or Battle, the black guy. While watching the boats passing by the East River Bill understands that Dr. Claggart, the psychiatrist who is in care of him, will never heal his sick soul.
The Last Demon
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 2011
The three collected here, about a girl who pretends to be a man in order to study the Torah, a frustrated demon, and a writer trying to understand the confusion of a holocaust survivor, illuminate the great themes of human suffering with supernal grace.
Filboid Studge, The Story of a Mouse That Helped
Saki - 1911
Munro, better known by his pen name, Saki, wrote wickedly comic satires of upper-class Edwardian life. These seven short stories are macabre and extremely funny: they include a cat that is regrettably taught to speak, a vicious pet ferret worshipped as a god, a businessman triumphantly selling an unpalatable breakfast mush, and many dark twists and barbs.This book includes Filboid Studge, a Story of a Mouse That Helped, Todermory, Mrs Packletide's Tiger, Sredni Vashtar, The Music on the Hill, The Recessional and The Cobweb.
The Judgement and In the Penal Colony
Franz Kafka - 1912
All the titles are extracts from "Penguin Classics" titles.
Children On Their Birthdays
Truman Capote - 1976
This is one of 50 fascinating, disturbing, moving or funny short books published in an appealing new format to celebrate the 50th anniversary of 'Penguin Modern Classics'.