Books in the Harper Perennial Modern Classics series

'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "e;I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..."e;'Hunter S. Thompson is roaring down the desert highway to Las Vegas with his attorney, the Samoan, to find the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, the duo engage in a surreal succession of chemically enhanced confrontations with casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans.This ebook edition of Hunter S. Thompson's iconic masterpiece, a controversial bestseller when it appeared in 1971, features the brilliant Ralph Steadman illustrations of the original. It brings to a new generation the hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror of Hunter S. Thompson's musings on the collapse of the American Dream.

A classic memoir of prison breaks and adventure - a bestselling phenomenon of the 1960sCondemned for a murder he had not committed, Henri Charriere (nicknamed Papillon) was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. Recaptured, he went into solitary confinement and was sent eventually to Devil's Island, a hell-hole of disease and brutality. No one had ever escaped from this notorious prison - no one until Papillon took to the shark-infested sea supported only by a makeshift coconut-sack raft. In thirteen years he made nine daring escapes, living through many fantastic adventures while on the run - including a sojourn with South American Indians whose women Papillon found welcomely free of European restraints...Papillon is filled with tension, adventure and high excitement. It is also one of the most vivid stories of human endurance ever written.Henri Charriere died in 1973 at the age of 66.

The best, the fastest, the hippest and the most unorthodox account ever published of the US presidential electoral process in all its madness and corruption.In 1972 Hunter S. Thompson, the creator and king of Gonzo journalism, covered the US presidential campaign for Rolling Stone magazine alongside the establishment newsmen of Washington. The result is a classic piece of subversive reportage and a fantastic ride on the rollercoaster of Hunter's uniquely savage imagination. In his own words, written years before Watergate: 'It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.'

A masterpiece of black humour from the renown comic and acclaimed author of 'At Swim-Two-Birds' - Flann O'Brien.A thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle, and a chilling fable of unending guilt, 'The Third Policeman' is comparable only to 'Alice in Wonderland' as an allegory of the absurd.Distinguished by endless comic invention and its delicate balancing of logic and fantasy, 'The Third Policeman' is unique in the English language.

A Harper Perennial Modern Classics reissue of this unflinching examination of post-war French intellectual life, and an amazing chronicle of love, philosophy and politics from one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.

A sensational international bestseller, and winner of Frances' coveted Prix Goncourt, 'The Lover' is an unforgettable portrayal of the incandescent relationship between two lovers, and of the hate that slowly tears the girl's family apart.Saigon, 1930s: a poor young French girl meets the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family. Soon they are lovers, locked into a private world of passion and intensity that defies all the conventions of their society.A sensational international bestseller, 'The Lover' is disturbing, erotic, masterly and simply unforgettable.

A new cover re-issue of the ground-breaking, worldwide bestselling feminist tract.

A timeless classic dealing with the complexity and hardships of relationships, addiction and faith.Judith Hearne, a Catholic middle-aged spinster, moves into yet another bed-sit in Belfast. A socially isolated woman of modest means, she teaches piano to a handful of students to pass the day. Her only social activity is tea with the O'Neill family, who secretly dread her weekly visits.Judith soon meets wealthy James Madden and fantasises about marrying this lively, debonair man. But Madden sees her in an entirely different light, as a potential investor in a business proposal. On realising that her feelings are not reciprocated, she turns to an old addiction - alcohol. Having confessed her problems to an indifferent priest, she soon loses her faith and binges further. She wonders what place there is for her in a world that so values family ties and faith, both of which she is without.

The shorter works of one of the world's greatest writers, including the classics The Gambler and Notes From the Underground.The short works of Dostoevsky exist in the very large shadow of his astonishing longer novels, but they too are among the best works in the history of literature. The Gambler chronicles Dostoevsky's own addiction, which he eventually overcame. Many have argued that Notes From the Underground contains several keys to understanding the themes of the longer novels, like Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. Those stories are joined here by other classics, including White Nights and The Eternal Husband.In the introduction to this volume, Ronald Hingley writes: ?It is admittedly impossible to evaluate or understand Dostoevsky's major work properly without taking into account his less voluminous writings, (and) it is also true that many of his shorter works are masterpieces in their own right?as it is hoped the reader may remind himself or discover for the first time...?

From the author of 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' come stories of hardship and hope in post-war Britain.The title story in this classic collection tells of Smith, a defiant young rebel, inhabiting the no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal. As his steady jog-trot rhythm transports him over an unrelenting, frost-bitten earth, he wonders why, for whom and for what he is running.A groundbreaking work, 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' captured the grim isolation of the working class in the English Midlands when it was first published in 1960s. But Sillitoe's depiction of petty crime and deep-seated anger in industrial and desperate cities remains as potent today as it was almost half a century ago.

Written as an act of revenge against the 17 year-old who came between her and Jean-Paul Sartre, She Came to Stay is Simone de Beauvoir's first novel - a lacerating study of a young, naive couple in love and the usurping woman who comes between them.