Vintage Minis

Can we truly know the one we love? In this painfully candid book Marcel Proust looks straight into the green eye of every lover’s jealous struggle. He broods on why we are driven to try possess one another, how jealousy can outlive death, and whether we can ever reclaim those careless days of first love. There is no greater chronicler of jealousy’s darkest fears and destructive suspicions than Proust.

Selected from the book In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Desire by Haruki Murakami
Eating by Nigella Lawson
Home by Salman Rushdie
Babies by Anne Enright

Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first arrives in London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the language a muddle of personal pronouns and moody verbs. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker…

Selected from the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Babies by Anne Enright
Depression by William Styron
Race by Toni Morrison
Home by Salman Rushdie

Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this visionary collection, Virginia Woolf leads us on a transformative journey through the liberating powers of the mind. From an exploration of why women were barred from writing and under what conditions they might break free, to the solace derived from haunting London's streets, these essays and stories present Woolf at her most impassioned, rendering the pursuit of liberty one of life's most poetic adventures.

Selected from the books A Room of One's Own, The Waves and Street Haunting and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Love by Jeanette Winterson
Home by Salman Rushdie
Language by Xiaolu Guo
Race by Toni Morrison

How do we love? With romance. With work. Through heartbreak. Throughout a lifetime. As a means, but not an end. Love in all its forms has been an abiding theme of Jeanette Winterson’s writing. Here are selections from her books about that impossible, essential force, stories and truths that search for the mythical creature we call Love.

Selected from the books of Jeanette Winterson

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Eating by Nigella Lawson
Jealousy by Marcel Proust
Babies by Anne Enright
Desire by Haruki Murakami

Enjoy Helen Simpson’s sharply funny, humane take on the everyday joys and struggles of motherhood in this perfect Mother’s Day gift.

Welcome to motherhood – a land of aching fatigue, constant self-sacrifice and thankless servitude, a land of bottomless devotion, small hands and feet like warm pink roses, and velvet kisses. Here is a land where men and women, once carefree and engrossed in work and sex, now try to solve age-old arguments and search fruitlessly for another hour in the day. Perhaps you know this land well, or perhaps you’re entering it for the first time – either way, you need these honest funny humane stories from an expert guide.

Selected from Helen Simpson’s short story collections Dear George, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life and Constitutional

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Language by Xiaolu Guo
Fatherhood by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Eating by Nigella Lawson
Drinking by John Cheever

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. His account of his experience, and his vision for all that psychedelics could offer to mankind, has influenced writers, artists and thinkers around the world.

The unabridged text of The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Drinking by John Cheever
Swimming by Roger Deakin
Eating by Nigella Lawson
Desire by Haruki Murakami

An exploration of race from one of the twentieth century’s primary chroniclers of the African American experience.

Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on bringing their past home. Strange and unexpected, yet always stirring, Morrison’s writing on race sinks us deep into the heart and mind of our troubled humanity.

Includes selections from the books Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved by Toni Morrison

‘She gave me permission to be unapologetically Black. She informed me of the power that resided in me. She validated me when the world questioned my humanity’ Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Sisters by Louisa May Alcott
Love by Jeanette Winterson
Babies by Anne Enright
Language by Xiaolu Guo

Your sister might be the kindred soul who knows you best, or the most alien being in your household; she might enrage you or inspire you; she might be your fiercest competitor or closest co-conspirator, but she'll always share with you a totally unique bond. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy are four of the most famous sisters in literature, and these stories of the joys and heartaches they share are a touching celebration of the special ties of sisterhood.

Selected from the books Little Women and Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Fatherhood by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Motherhood by Helen Simpson
Babies by Anne Enright
Love by Jeanette Winterson

How do you remember the summers of your childhood?

For Laurie Lee they were flower-crested, heady, endless days. Here is an evocation of summer like no other – a remote valley filled with the scent of hay, jazzing wasps, blackberries plucked and gobbled, and games played until the last drop of dusk. Lee’s joyful and stirring writing captures the very essence of England’s golden season.

Selected from the book Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

‘An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished’ J.B. Priestly

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

Is there anything quite so exhilarating as swimming in wild water? This is a joyful swimming tour of Britain, a frog’s-eye view of the country’s best bathing holes – the rivers, rock pools, lakes, ponds, lochs and sea that define a watery island. Charming, funny, inspiring, an assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam, a celebration of the magic of water – this book will indeed make you want to strip off and leap in.

Selected from the book Waterlog by Roger Deakin

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Eating by Nigella Lawson
Liberty by Virginia Woolf
Summer by Laurie Lee
Desire by Haruki Murakami

Bob Slocum is anxious, bored and fearful of his job. So why is it he wants nothing more than the chance to speak at the next company convention? In this darkly satirical book, Joseph Heller takes us for a turn on the maddening hamster wheel of work. Heller’s workplace is a cradle of paranoia, bravado and nauseating banter, forever shadowed by that perennial question, who’s really running the show here? In Heller’s hands, our daily grind has never seemed so absurd.

Selected from the book Something Happened by Joseph Heller

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Drinking by John Cheever
Swimming by Roger Deakin
Liberty by Virginia Woolf
Death by Julian Barnes