Classic Essays

A novel about the rich stories of small places, from the Nobel Prize–winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Books of Jacob and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the...

An entertaining and insightful history of martial arts and the role of the warrior, drawing on pop culture, philosophy, mythology, religion, and spirituality The urge to forge one’s character by fighting, in daily life as well as on the mat, appeals to something deep within us. More than a...

An unprecedented collection of the visionary Argentine writer’s meditations on the mystical realm Jorge Luis Borges immersed himself and his readers in metaphysical fantasies—playing reason against faith, belief against logic. His profound knowledge of eastern religions was an endless...

In the uproarious sequel to Life Among the Savages, the author of The Haunting of Hill House confronts the most vexing demons yet: her children In the long out-of-print sequel to Life Among the Savages, Jackson’s four children have grown from savages into full-fledged demons. After bursting...

How a Florentine orphanage rescued thousands of children and revolutionized childhood education amid the splendor of Renaissance art. The story begins with the abandonment of the newborn Agata Smeralda on February 5, 1445, in Florence’s Hospital of the Innocents, the first—but certainly not...

This definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations in full of the epic. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers. Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war...

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the...

“In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny.”—John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed A deeply felt...

*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Translation Prize* *Finalist for the National Translation Award* *Honorable Mention for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize* “These days, when an American president has decreed that ‘there are only two genders: male and female’...

From a Washington Post critic and self-described meathead, a witty, incisive, poignant exploration of male body image, from the history of the gym to the politics of superheroes to the world of manfluencers Michael Andor Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an...

This definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations in full of the epic. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers. Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war...

In sixteen wonderful stories, Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener burrows deep into the secret lives of animals and the hidden world of nature. Here he sheds light on nature’s most awesome and beguiling handiwork, from the sublime shaping and reshaping of earth’s lands and seas...

“If Carpentier is ever to get a new reading in English, it should be now. . . . West’s translations . . . reintroduce English-language readers to this giant of Latin American fiction.” —Natasha Wimmer, The New York Review of Books The best-known book by Cuba’s most important...

Much about Nalanda remains shrouded in mystery. When was it founded? Who founded it? Who studied and taught there? What subjects were offered? How many students and teachers were there? Was Nalanda a university in the modern sense? And what ultimately led to its downfall? Nalanda by Abhay K...

“Vital” –The New York Times Book Review “Provocative…[Hazleton] paddles the river of doubt with energy and exuberance.” –The Seattle Times A widely admired writer on religion celebrates agnosticism as the most vibrant, engaging—and ultimately the most honest—stance toward the...

The groundbreaking feminist and socialist writings of Puerto Rican author and activist Luisa Capetillo A Penguin Classic In 1915, Puerto Rican activist Luisa Capetillo was arrested and acquitted for being the first woman to wear men's trousers publicly. While this act of gender-nonconforming...

This definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations in full of the epic. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers. Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war...

It will come as a surprise to some readers that the greater part of Jorge Luis Borges's extraordinary writing was not in the genres of fiction or poetry, but in the various forms of non-fiction prose. His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and notes on politics and...

FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE 2023 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE, AND THE 2023 O. HENRY PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2022 "An endlessly inventive and moving collection from a thrilling and capacious young talent." —Jess Walter, author of...

An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was...