Penguin Modern Classics

'The play of moonlight on the icebergs was indescribably strange, and its magnificent refracted shimmers were brighter than day. One night, fooled by its brilliance, I got up at three in the morning.'

Scorching heat, rich, fertile soil and treacherous snakes marked the landscape in which Kpomassie grew up in 1950s Togo, West Africa. When, as a teenager, he discovered a book on Greenland, this distant land of snow and ice became an instant obsession and he embarked on the adventure of a lifetime.

In this work of rich, immersive travel writing Kpomassie invites the reader to join him on his audacious journey as he makes his way from the Equator to the bitter cold of the Arctic and settles into life with the Inuit peoples, adapting to their foods and customs. Part memoir, part anthropological observation, this warm, captivating narrative teems with nuanced observations on community, belonging and colonization.

Originally published in 1981, this critically acclaimed work has been translated into nine languages and is a rare example of travel writing from a West African perspective that highlights unexpected connection between cultures despite their contrasting landscapes.

This translation by James Kirkup has previously been published with the title An African in Greenland

A collection of thirteen stories that offer an inside view of fighting men poised at the edge of death.

Len Deighton's only collection of shorter fiction, this dazzling array of stories spans twenty-three centuries of warfare.

From Hannibal's march on Rome - when strange, moving objects terrorise the troops of one of the toughest and most skilful armies in history - to the efforts of a belittled Civil War general to get his men to face the Confederate army; to the dawn skies above an artillery-blasted French battle-line where a dogfight unfolds, to Vietnam; where two lost American soldiers stumble across an abandoned military airfield.

Each story in Declarations of War explores the effects of war upon man's character, how it pushes him to act in a dehumanized, machine-like way, often leading to extraordinary deeds, both good and ill. It portrays human conflict through a series of devastating experiences and shows how great deeds are often but the smallest thread in the large fabric of war.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his plane vanished over the Mediterranean Sea during a reconnaissance mission. Nearly eighty years later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power.

The narrator is a pilot downed in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane. His efforts are interrupted one day by the miraculous appearance of a little prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. "In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey," the narrator recalls. "Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket." And so begins their dialogue, one confined only by the limits of the imagination, by the horizon of a child's wonder...

The three confidence tricksters had a style that earned them millions. Silas was the leader, slick and self-assured - but dissatisfied. Bob was the junior partner, longing for the open road where pickings were rich and the living was easy. And Liz, Silas' mistress, was in between. Theirs was a built-in love triangle with its own rewards ... and its own dangers.

In New York these con-artists do a 'business deal' worth millions. But back in London Silas' plan to bilk an emergent African nation misfires. Then Bob takes over the running of the operation - and Liz. A Beirut bank is their target and each member of the trio gets what he or she deserves - each with a twist of lemon.

If America is a lunatic asylum, then California is the Violent Ward.

Mickey Murphy is a criminal lawyer with an office in LA's downtown low-rent district, an ex-wife who bleeds him for money and 'clients who would plead the Fifth Amendment if they could count that high'. To make matters worse, Mickey finds himself embroiled against his wishes in an elaborate and clever scam that's going askew, and being interrogated by the LAPD about a brutal murder.

With an observant eye and ear for the California 'scene', Deighton once again uses his brilliant storytelling skills to propel an exciting and suspenseful narrative at breakneck speed to a dramatic climax in a riot-torn city.

January 1942. Rommel's seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt - perhaps soon to threaten Cairo itself.

And Rommel has a spy in the city - a source so well-informed that the German commander knows in advance every movement of the allied forces.

Amongst the teeming streets and bazaars, the British, led by Major Albert Cutler, must find him. But Cairo is a city of fool's gold, where nothing and nobody, not even Cutler, can be taken at face value...

Deep in Marxist Guerilla territory a hopeless war is being fought.

The Berlin Wall is demolished. Marx is dead. Try telling that to Ramon and his desperate men hiding in the jungle cradling their AK 47s, dusting off the slabs of Semtex and dreaming of world revolution.

MAMista takes us to the dusty, violent capital of Spanish Guiana in South America, and thence into the depths of the rain forest. There, four people become caught up in a struggle both political and personal, a struggle corrupted by ironies and deceits, and riddled with the accidents of war. They are four people who never should have found themselves bound together in a mission for revolution, which may be the sentence of death.

Never has Deighton portrayed so accurately the terror and the tedium of war, or the shifting alliances and betrayals between people who have nothing to lose but their lives.

Horace Rumpole - the rascally, Wordsworth-quoting Old Bailey hack - should be enjoying his retirement. Soaking unhappily in the Florida sun with his wife, Hilda (She Who Must Be Obeyed), it is safely assumed by all that Rumpole's wig has been hung up for good. But when a rather unkempt civil servant is mixed up in the mysterious death of a minor aristocrat, Rumpole seizes the opportunity to escape the life of leisure. He is soon back in court (via a budget airline) to do battle once more with Judge 'Mad Bull' Bullingham...

'Truth is mysterious, fleeting, always to be won. Freedom is dangerous, as hard to live as it is exalting'

This definitive new collection of Albert Camus' public speeches and lectures gives an unparalleled insight into the thought of one of the twentieth century's most enduring writers. From his pre-war speech on the politics and culture of the Mediterranean - delivered when he was just twenty-two - to his impassioned Nobel Prize acceptance speeches, Speaking Out makes manifest Camus' 'stubborn humanism', his longing for freedom and justice. In a Europe scarred by the horrors of the early twentieth century, these speeches mark a singular artist's commitment to a kinder, truer world.

Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a vivid evocation of wartime England, the story of a group of American fighter pilots flying escort missions over Germany in the winter of 1943-4.

At the centre of the novel are two young men: the deeply reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother, estranged son of a deskbound colonel, and the cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse, well on his way to becoming America's Number One Flying Ace. Alike only in their courage, they forge a bond of friendship in battle with far-reaching consequences for themselves, and for the future of those they love.

11 June, 1940 - where is Winston Churchill?

A private aircraft takes off from a small town in central France, while Adolf Hitler, the would-be conqueror of Europe, prepares for a clandestine meeting near the Belgian border.

For more than forty years the events of this day have been Britain's most closely guarded secret. Anyone who learns of them must die - with their file stamped:

XPD - expedient demise.

We were an army of shadows, of ghosts, walking as if to the beat of some dark psychic mechanism'

The Cuban Revolution changed the course of the twentieth century. Following years of brutal tyranny and poverty, a band of idealistic young people fought against immense odds to overthrow a dictator and emerged victorious. This is the story of how they did it. Che Guevara's classic eyewitness account chronicles the transformation of a country, and of Che himself, from troop doctor to revolutionary icon.

'Powerful and poetic ... For anyone interested in the myth of Che Guevara ... this book is essential reading' Colm Tóibín, Observer

'Che's life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom' Nelson Mandela

'A book full of marvels' New Yorker

The American Deep South, in the 1970s. Velma Henry, once a formidable political activist, has grown weary and disillusioned with the fight for civil rights. She wants to end it all. But then she finds herself in the hands of a Black faith community, and the fabled healer Minnie Ransom. As she works through the rage and fear of her traumatic past, Velma finds herself changing, becoming whole and, maybe, free. The Salt Eaters is a boldly optimistic, profound exploration of memory, the self, power and Black health as liberation.

'A hymn to individual courage' The Times Literary Supplement

'Her characters inhabit the nonlinear, sacred space and sacred time of traditional African religion' The New York Times Book Review

'Fresh, timeless ... a lively work of art' Observer

'Buchi Emecheta was the foremother of black British women's writing . . . powerful fictions written from and about our lives' Bernardine Evaristo

'Most dreams, as all dreamers know quite well, do have setbacks. Adah's dream was no exception, for hers had many'

They nicknamed Adah 'the Igbo tigress' at school in Nigeria, she was so fearless. Now she has moved to London to join her husband, and is determined to succeed. But her welcome from 1960's England - and the man she married - is a cold one. Providing for her growing family, struggling to survive and negotiating everyday injustices along the way, Adah still resolves that she will never give up her dream of becoming a writer.

'Bold, brave, defiant ... its exploration of blackness, the white gaze, and the development of the main character Adah's sense of self is extremely powerful' Gal-dem

Deighton's incendiary novel of the film industry uncovers a Hollywood Babylon for our time.

Marshall Stone, international superstar and charismatic member of Hollywood's elite. Abundantly blessed with charm, genius and wealth, the one gift he most desires - everlasting youth - seems within his grasp when an eminent writer begins the star's biography. But painful memories and suppressed scandals threaten to expose the fiction of his life.

Dazzled by flattery and numbed by threats, the biographer is caught up in the big-daddy world where books are properties, films are investments, ratings are rigged, and stars and directors are bought and sold like slaves at an auction.

The rituals, the wheeler-dealing politics, and back-stabbing tactics of the richest industry in the world have never been more effectively portrayed. And at the heart of this glittering machine, a brilliant star who will do almost anything to remain untarnished.

Francis Sancher, a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others, is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe. No one is particularly surprised since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself. As the villagers come to pay their respects, they each reveal another piece of the mystery behind his life and death.

Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community. A beautifully crafted, Rashomon-like novel, this gripping story, first published in France in 1989, is imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture.