Penguin Books Australia

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Pius Adesanmi explores what Africa means to him as an African and as a citizen of the world.  Examining the personal and the political, tradition and modernity, custom and culture, Adesanmi grapples with the complexity and contradictions of this vast continent, zooming in most closely on Nigeria, the country of his birth.

An updated edition of Thoreau's most widely read works.

Including works from Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Breton and Manx, this Celtic Miscellany offers a rich blend of poetry and prose from the eighth to the nineteenth century, and provides a unique insight into the minds and literature of the Celtic people. It  is a literature  dominated by a deep sense of wonder, wild inventiveness and a profound sense of the uncanny, in which...

Whether it's through banter, trash talking, the perfectly timed barb, a witty observation or the crude but effective sledge or counter-sledge, Aussies make taking the piss an art form, especially in the sporting arena. Here, from the MCG to the SCG, golf courses and racing tracks, comes the best witticisms, classic insults and brutal take-downs to ever cross the lips of our favourite sportspeople...

'This whole collection is brimming with vibrant and original writing.'
- Brenda Walker

28 life-changing stories about who we are, and what we want to be.

Some of us just blow with the breeze, and some of us feel every wind-shift.  Some of us are never blown the same way twice, and some of us are never the same way wherever we're blown
- Glen Hunting

When Satan appears in the story, he looks a...

The world, and Australia, is now a profoundly different place – interconnected and yet fractured – and the old stories have lost their relevance. Political and marketing rhetoric has reached its use-by date, and new definitions will be distilled from the work of artists.

'One of the world's finest short-story writers.'
Robert Drewe

' Dark Roots announces the arrival of a major talent in Australian fiction.   Cate Kennedy has a near pitch-perfect voice and a feeling for the precise moment when stars move in the cosmos.'
Peter Temple

'Kennedy's stories are immaculate little slivers of life that needle into my heart and mind, and stay there.   She's a writer's...

In Lives , an extraordinary writer encounters some remarkable people – and evokes their inner lives.

After searching high and low for the year's outstanding short fiction, Delia Falconer has selected masterful stories from some of the country's best-loved authors and exciting work from the up-and-coming.  'Stories don't have the novel's luxury of great swathes of time, its layerings, its wanderings, its counterpoints,' she observes.  'Instead, they must cut to the bone straightaway . . ...

'Anthology' comes from the Greek word that stands for garlands - a bouquet of flowers. An anthology then, should be a sort of reminder of something else, a small token of something much larger. In the case of flowers, they bring with their fragrance and colorfulness the reminder of the fields, of a season. Coelho's anthology, therefore, is not only a collection of texts or poems, but a gift, something...

Genius. Renaissance man. Iconoclast. Master of detection.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle funneled much of his real-life genius-and the brilliance of others around him-into Sherlock Holmes, creating a character greater than the sum of his parts. In this quirky and intriguing look at the traits that made Sherlock Holmes successful, David Acord explores how to unleash our own genius.

Not only does Acord give...

Penguin brings you the finest short stories by the greatest writers

'The short story is enjoying a revival all the more encouraging when viewed against the gloom surrounding the future of the literary novel . . .'

Penguin brings you the finest short stories by the greatest writers
 
'Do the Irish have, in relation to anybody else, any special capacity for the short story?'

In this collection of thirty-eight short stories covering many generations and moods of Irish writing, this question is emphatically answered in the affirmative. These mercurial, intoxicating, witty and sometimes sad stories range from...

Penguin brings you the finest short stories by the greatest writers

'It is my hope that the Wales of the past and present is well represented in this volume, together with the world of work and workmen in some of our more ravaged terrains.'

In twenty-four short stories, written by Welsh men and women, for the most part about Welsh people, we are treated to depictions of valley and mountain, country...

Penguin brings you the finest short stories by the greatest writers

'In this collection the heretical principle has been adopted that if a writer is Scots, something of the Scottish spirit must inevitably emerge from his work.'

In the twenty stories collected here we are given a multi-faceted view of Scotland, the Scots and the Scottish short story. With stories ranging from Roman Britain through the...