In a world of choices, there’s only one real Classic. To celebrate the 80th anniversary of Penguin Classics, our editors recommend eighty titles from our catalog of more than 2,000 books, from cornerstone classics and award-winning translations to new favorites. … [Read more...]
Tradition and Social Change
July 25, 2026 by
radition is one of those fundamental concepts which today is overused, with the result that its futurist opponents ignorantly despise it, while its faithful defenders often do not really understand it. The first believe that tradition is the opposite of change, the latter are unsure about the manner … [Read more...]
A Jakarta childhood ends: Tari Lang bears witness to Indonesia’s 1965 bloodbath
July 24, 2026 by
There are historical crimes much of the world has agreed to half-remember. Indonesia’s anti-communist massacres of 1965–66, when the Indonesian military and its civilian collaborators murdered somewhere between 500,000 and a million people—trade unionists, peasant organizers, ethnic Chinese, … [Read more...]
‘Just don’t ask me about politics’: How an Indonesian epic warns against staying silent
July 23, 2026 by
“I know something about responsibilities. Just don’t ask me about politics,” Bhisma says to Amba, not knowing that it will change his life. The politics he thinks he can avoid will consume him, and each page turn brings a new shade of red. Indonesian author Laksmi Pamuntjak’s Amba: The Question … [Read more...]
Motherhood, monstrosity, and doppelgängers: An interview with author Tiffany Tsao about her novel ‘But Won’t I Miss Me’
July 19, 2026 by
n Tiffany Tsao’s new novel But Won’t I Miss Me, we’re invited into a world slightly off-kilter from our own. At first, our protagonist Vivi’s life seems relatively normal, though tough — she’s a new, single mother to a son named Cloud; she has a day job refurbishing old equipment. Motherhood, to … [Read more...]
