Penguin Modern Classics 6–Irish & Latin American Classics

To start with Irish modern classics, there are only three represented in my collection. The first is a 1966 edition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I vaguely recall was on the curriculum of my Literature course at university.

1966 edition – photographs from the National Gallery of Ireland

The other two Irish novels are At Swim- Two- Birds by Flann O’Brien and Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime and other stories by Oscar Wilde.

1971 edition – “The Bus By The River” by Jack B Yeats	1974 edition – A Private View 1881” by W P Frith

As for South American novels I have of course Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths,  my introduction to his work, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  which was also the first book of his that I read.

1972 edition – “La Havane” by Portocarrero	1977 edition – “Misery of the Peasants by J C Orozco

And finally for this post, two novels by Alejo Carpentier, a Swiss born Cuban writer, who was a major influence on  magic realist writers such as Marquez , Fuentes etc. I can’t remember if I ever read the two following novels, Explosion in a Cathedral and The Lost Steps, but these Penguin Modern Classics editions have wonderful surrealist covers.

1971 edition – “Tete Raphaelesque Eclatee” by Dali	1968 edition – “The Great Forest” by Max Ernst

The next post will feature a miscellany of nationalities and the last of the Penguin Modern Classics in my personal library.