Quo Vadis

An aging gentleman reads so many chivalry books that he becomes a knight errant and sets out with his squire Sancho Panza. The novel that arguably started the modern novel, complete in a clean modern edition.

Miguel de Cervantes

Gregor Samsa wakes one morning transformed into a giant insect, and his family's first worry is his job. Our own Project Aldus edition of Kafka's most famous story about alienation.

Franz Kafka

Werther, a sensitive young artist, falls hopelessly in love with Lotte, who is engaged to another man. Goethe's novel in letters, the book that made Romanticism a European obsession.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Siddhartha leaves his Brahmin family in search of enlightenment and tries every path, from asceticism to wealth and love. Hesse's short, luminous novel of a spiritual journey in ancient India.

Hermann Hesse

Renzo and Lucia, two young villagers, are kept apart by a local tyrant amid war, famine and plague in 17th century Lombardy. The great Italian novel, in English translation.

Alessandro Manzoni