Penguin Books Australia

'The wood is dark, and full of the soft rot and manic growth we call rainforest.  The rainforest has always spawned secrets.  Light itself is clandestine here.'

Janette Turner Hospital, The Last Magician

Borges' On Argentina provides vital information for anyone trying to come to grips with Latin American thought in the early twentieth century. The twenty selections chosen for this collection will flesh out the vision of the young Borges between 1925 and 1930. These essays constitute an important intellectual biography of one of the most influential Latin American authors of all time.

A haunted castle and a ruined bloodline

Manfred, wicked lord of Otranto Castle, is horrified when his son is crushed to death on his wedding day. But rather than witness the end of his line, as foretold in a curse, he resolves to send his own wife to a convent and marry the intended bride himself.

However, Manfred's lustful greed will be disturbed by the terrifying omens that now haunt his castle:...

A fascinating mix of autobiographical episodes and extraordinary Egyptian theology, Burroughs's final novel is poignant and melancholic. Blending war films and pornography, and referencing Kafka and Mailer, The Western Lands confirms his status as one of America's greatest writers. The final novel of the trilogy containing Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads, this is a profound meditation...

Great...

Written by Europe's first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels of medieval society, from royal courtiers to prostitutes.

Written around AD 1200 by an unnamed Icelandic author, the Orkneyinga Saga is an intriguing fusion of myth, legend and history. The only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action, it tells of an era when the islands were still part of the Viking world, beginning with their conquest by the kings of Norway in the ninth century. The saga describes the subsequent history of the Earldom...

Cicero's speeches 'In Defence of Sextus Roscius of Amerina,' 'In Defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus,' 'In Defence of Gaius Rabirius,' 'Note on the Speeches in Defence of Caelius and Milo,' and 'In Defence of King Deiotarus' provide insight into Roman life, law, and history.

By mid-5th century BC, Athens was governed by democratic rule and power turned upon the ability of the citizen to command the attention of the people, and to sway the crowds of the assembly.  It was the Sophists who understood the art of rhetoric and the importance of transforming effective reasoning into persuasive public speaking.

A stirring account of wartime experiences from the leader of the first regiment of emancipated slaves

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister, was a fervent member of New England's abolitionist movement, an active participant in the Underground Railroad, and part of a group that supplied material aid to John Brown before his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry.  When the Civil War broke out...

At once a classic of travel literature and a penetrating portrait of a 'sensibility on tour,' Flaubert in Egypt wonderfully captures the young writer's impressions during his 1849 voyages. Using diaries, letters, travel notes, and the evidence of Flaubert's traveling companion, Maxime Du Camp, Francis Steegmuller reconstructs his journey through the bazaars and brothels of Cairo and down the Nile to...

When Fanny Trollope set sail for America in 1827 with hopes of joining a Utopian community of emancipated slaves, she took with her three of her children and a young French artist, leaving behind her son Anthony, growing debts and a husband going slowly mad from mercury poisoning.  But what followed was a tragicomedy of illness, scandal and failed business ventures. Nevertheless, on her return...

In the South Seas records Stevenson's travels with his wife Fanny and their family in the Marquesas, the Paumotus and the Gilbert Islands during 1888-9.  Originally drafted in journal form while Stevenson travelled, it was then ambitiously rewrittento describe the islands and islanders as well as Stevenson's own personal experiences. In the South Seas was published posthumously in 1896.  Its...