Books in Penguin Essentials series

Karen Blixen went to Kenya in 1914 to run a coffee farm; its failure in 1931 caused her to return to Denmark where she wrote this classic account of her experiences. "Out of Africa" is a celebration of her life there; her friendship with the various people of the area and her sympathetic response to the landscape and animals are drawn with warmth and unusual clarity. Although the book is pervaded by her sense of loss, Karen Blixen looks back with an unsentimental intelligence to portray a way of life that is now gone forever.

With her tousled blond hair and upturned nose, dark glasses and chic black dresses, Holly Golightly is top notch in style and a sensation wherever she goes. Her brownstone apartment vibrates with martini-soaked parties as she plays hostess to millionaires and gangsters alike. Yet Holly never loses sight of her ultimate goal - to find a real life place like Tiffany's that makes her feel at home. Immortalized in a film starring Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is full of sharp wit and in its exuberant cast of characters vividly captures the restless, slightly madcap era of early 1940s New York.

A Clockwork Orange is the daring and electrifying book by Anthony Burgess that inspired one of the most notorious films ever made, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'What's it going to be then, eh?' In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? Study of freewill? A Clockwork Orange is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates a new language - 'nadsat', the teenage slang of a not-too-distant future. 'Every generation should discover this book' Time Out 'A gruesomely witty cautionary tale' Time 'Not only about man's violent nature and his capacity to choose between good and evil. It is about the excitements and intoxicating effects of language' Daily Telegraph 'I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language...a very funny book' William S. Burroughs 'One of the cleverest and most original writers of his generation' The Times Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917. He studied English at Manchester University and joined the army in 1940 where he spent six years in the Education Corps. After demobilization, he worked first as a college lecturer in Speech and Drama and then as a grammar-school master before becoming an education officer in the Colonial Service, stationed in Malay and Borneo. In 1959 Burgess was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and decided to become a full-time writer. Despite being given less than a year to live, Burgess went on to write at least a book a year - including A Clockwork Orange (1962), M/F (1971), Man of Nazareth (1979), Earthly Powers (1980) and The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985) - and hundreds of book reviews right up until his death. He was also a prolific composer and produced many full-scale works for orchestra and other media during his lifetime. Anthony Burgess died in 1993.

Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to mankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh.

Virginia Woolf's lyrical, nostalgic novel centres at first on a family holiday in Skye where the subtle shifts of tension and affection between the Ramsays and their guests are delicately explored. James, the youngest son of Mr and Mrs Ramsay, has a devout wish to visit the lighthouse but his father, a rather pompous, philosophical man, seems determined to disappoint him. It is only many years later, when the war has brought dramatic changes to society and to the Ramsay family in particular, that the journey is made under very different circumstances.

Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfillment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel defined the new 'Beat' generation. It had tremendous impact on both sides of the Atlantic and made him famous overnight.

'When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him' - Jonathan Swift. A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern - this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk amongst the flesh-pots of a fallen city, documenting life on his Big Cief tablets as he goes - until his maroon-haired mother decrees that he must work.

'What we were after ...was lashings of ultra-violence'. In Anthony Burgess' infamous nightmare vision of youth culture in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Burgess writes of social prophecy and free will in this black comedy.