Field Work

Hannah Arendt’s penetrating observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of the political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the eighteenth-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the twentieth-century, Arendt […]

The Joke, Milan Kundera’s first novel, gained him a huge following in his own country and launched his worldwide literary reputation. In his foreword Kundera explains why this completely revised translation is the definitive edition of his work. ‘It is impossible to do justice here to the subtleties, comedy and wisdom of this very beautiful […]

As James Joyce was working on Finnegans Wake, he asked his friend T.S. Eliot to shepherd an early extract, simply known as ‘Work in Progress’ into print. This celebrated episode, Anna Livia Plurabelle, was the first part of Joyce’s extraordinary text to be published in England, printed in pamphlet form in 1930. It became the […]

The most cherished of poets, Philip Larkin is a writer with an unrivalled ability to touch readers with his evocations of English life. The Whitsun Weddings, his first volume with Faber and Faber, was published in 1964. This Faber Modern Classics edition includes a foreword by Alan Johnson MP. ‘Larkin, with his (in the best […]