Penguin Books

Set in Italy in the summer of 1940, this trio of stories explores the relationships between the different generations caught up in the war as well as Calvino's own experiences as a teenager. In the title story, 'Into the War', we are given an insight into what life was really like for those too young to be conscripted into Mussolini's army, while...

Zadie Smith's brilliant tragicomic NW follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the...

Why does holding a hot drink make us like people more?How can a soldier under fire not even notice he's been shot?What makes sex so much fun?Touch is the most important sense we have. Without it, we cannot entirely feel pleasure or pain - we are less than human.In fact, as David Linden demonstrates in the astonishing stories gathered here, touch is...

The summation of the existentialist philosophy threaded throughout all his writing, Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus is translated by Justin O'Brien with an introduction by James Wood in Penguin Classics.In this profound and moving philosophical statement, Camus poses the fundamental question: is life worth living? If human existence holds no...

John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent thinkers on technology and design, and in How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future.Machines are already more powerful than we can comprehend, and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in...

Moodily atmospheric, full of verve and energy, Maggie Cassidy is Kerouac's poignant tale of teenage romance in New England. The story of Jack and Maggie, in love with the idea of being in love, looking ahead to marriage with hope and trepidation, is told with touching simplicity. It skillfully captures both the intensity and the ordinariness of...