The Betrothed

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

A Roman patrician falls in love with a young Christian woman in the days of Nero, as the city burns and persecution begins. The Nobel winning Polish classic, in Jeremiah Curtin's translation.

Henryk Sienkiewicz