The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the unthinkable

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are: Bangladesh–Taslima Nasrin Chile–Pablo Neruda China–Bei Dao, Shu Ting El Salvador–Claribel Alegria France–Yves Bonnefoy Greece–Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos India–A.K. Ramanujan Israel–Yehuda Amichai Japan–Shuntaro Tanikawa Mexico–Octavio Paz Nicaragua–Ernesto Cardenal Nigeria–Wole Soyinka Norway–Tomas Transtromer Palestine–Mahmoud Darwish Poland–Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz Russia–Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko Senegal–Leopold Sedar Senghor South Africa–Breyten Breytenbach St. Lucia, West Indies–Derek Walcott

Kahlil Gibran reveals his vision of the soul and understanding of the world—past, present, and future—in this rich sampling of more than twenty works. Prose tales, fables, and poems evoke the mystic East and form a world at once powerful, tender, joyous, and melancholy. This collection, penned when Gibran was still a young writer, reveals many of the themes and styles plumbed throughout his life, including his lifelong struggle against injustice in “The Crucified,” his heart-wrenching lament for a Lebanon shackled by tradition and politics in “My Countrymen,” and his masterful use of symbolism and simile in “The Secrets of the Heart.”

A writer with infinite abilities, Gibran continually seeks true beauty, no matter the form.

Land of Two Rivers chronicles the story of one of the most fascinating and influential regions in the Indian subcontinent. The confluence of two major river systems, Ganga and Brahmaputra, created the delta of Bengal–an ancient land known as a center of trade, learning and the arts from the days of the Mahabharata and through the ancient dynasties. During the medieval era, this eventful journey saw the rise of Muslim dynasties which brought into being a unique culture, quite distinct from that of northern India. The colonial conquest in the eighteenth century opened the modern chapter of Bengal’s history and transformed the social and economic structure of the region. Nitish Sengupta traces the formation of Bengali identity through the Bengal Renaissance, the growth of nationalist politics and the complex web of events that eventually led to the partition of the region in 1947, analyzing why, despite centuries of shared history and culture, the Bengalis finally divided along communal lines. The struggle of East Pakistan to free itself from West Pakistan’s dominance is vividly described, documenting the economic exploitation and cultural oppression of the Bengali people. Ultimately, under the leadership of Bangabandhu Mujibur Rahman, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971. Land of Two Rivers is a scholarly yet extremely accessible account of the development of Bengal, sketching the eventful and turbulent history of this ancient civilization, rich in scope as well as in influence.

The acclaimed translation of the classic poem at the heart of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve “A plague . . . tests us in unique ways. . . . Only if you can face the invisible bullets all around us, and still keep calm, remain rational, and somehow find it possible to take pleasure in life, have you learned the lesson that [The Nature of Things] set out to teach.” —Stephen Greenblatt, The New Yorker Lucretius’ poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology, all of these subjects made more attractive by the poetry with which he illustrates them. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.