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“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man.” So begins the confession of a former minor civil servant, bitter and solitary, shut away in a corner of St Petersburg. First he explains, provocatively, why he rejects reason and progress. Then he tells of a humiliating evening with old schoolfellows, and of his meeting with a young woman, Liza. This narrator mocks everything, himself as much as the reader, and yet he fascinates. This book is often seen as the way into Dostoevsky's great novels. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this feverish text in the language you are learning.

Fifteen stories about Dublin around 1900, from childhood to adulthood. A schoolboy dreams of going to a grand bazaar, a young woman hesitates to leave everything behind for a sailor, an office clerk drowns his anger in drink, a family gathers for its annual dance at Christmas time. Joyce portrays ordinary people, caught in routine, at the moment their lives tip slightly. The collection ends with “The Dead”, one of the finest stories ever written. The stories are short and can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

One morning, Josef K., a senior bank official, is arrested at home without knowing why. Yet he is left free to go to work. The court trying him sits in suburban attics cluttered with files, and no one can tell him what he is accused of. Kafka had asked his friend Max Brod to burn this novel after his death, along with his other manuscripts. Max Brod refused. The word “Kafkaesque”, for any absurd situation where you get lost in rules and offices, comes largely from this book. With its strange, sometimes almost comic scenes, and the translation always in front of you, the novel reads well in the language you are learning.

The son of a sawmill owner in the Jura, Julien Sorel is poor, proud and ambitious, and secretly admires Napoleon. Taken on as tutor in the household of the mayor of Verrières, he seduces his wife, Madame de Rênal. Then, from the seminary in Besançon to the Paris mansion of the Marquis de La Mole, he climbs through a society that despises him. It is Stendhal's great novel of ambition and love. Julien, alone against a whole society, is one of the most fascinating heroes in literature. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this masterpiece in the language you are learning.

Descartes tells how, disappointed by everything he learnt at school, he decided to start again from scratch. He sets himself four simple rules for thinking well, and doubts everything, until he finds the one thing he cannot doubt: “I think, therefore I am”. A little book that changed the way we reason. Even today, it helps us think for ourselves, with method and a critical mind. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this founding text in the language you are learning.

On a feast day at Piraeus, the port of Athens, Socrates and his friends ask what justice is, and whether the just man is happier than the unjust one. To answer, Socrates imagines an ideal city ruled by philosophers. This is where he tells the famous allegory of the cave: chained prisoners take shadows on a wall for reality. For more than two thousand years, this book has fed debates on power, education and truth. It still helps us ask who should govern, and why. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great dialogue in the language you are learning.

On a fine June morning in London, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing the party she is giving that evening. As the day goes by, marked by the chimes of Big Ben, she thinks back to her youth and to Peter Walsh, the man she did not marry. Elsewhere in the city, Septimus, a former soldier, still carries the war inside him. The whole novel takes place in a single day, and we move from one character to another as if we could hear them think. Its first line, in which Mrs Dalloway says she will buy the flowers herself, has become famous. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic in the language you are learning.

In London, Gabriel Syme, a poet who has secretly become a policeman, manages to get himself elected to the supreme council of Europe's anarchists. Its seven members are each named after a day of the week, and Syme becomes Thursday. There he uncovers a plot, and a huge, terrifying leader whom everyone calls Sunday. Chases, masks falling, reversals: nothing is ever what it seems. It is a spy novel full of humour, which Chesterton himself subtitled “A Nightmare”. Fast-paced from start to finish, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In Ireland, young Stephen Dedalus grows up in a Catholic family that is slowly growing poorer. A pupil of the Jesuits, terrified for a time by a sermon on hell, he is even invited to become a priest. But he feels another calling growing inside him: the call of art. Joyce tells, barely disguised, the story of his own youth: how a sensitive boy becomes a writer who wants to think for himself. His hero bears the name of Daedalus, the figure from Greek mythology who made himself wings to escape. With the translation always in front of you, you can discover this great novel by Joyce in the language you are learning.

Paris, 1819. In the modest Vauquer boarding house, old Goriot, a retired vermicelli maker, goes without everything for his two daughters, who have married into high society. His young neighbour, Rastignac, a poor student from the provinces, dreams of entering that glittering world. The mysterious Vautrin, another lodger, explains its ruthless rules to him. This novel made Rastignac a common noun in French for an ambitious young man. It is one of the high points of “The Human Comedy”, about money, ambition and a father's love. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel by Balzac in the language you are learning.

In Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, Georges Duroy, a penniless former soldier, runs into an old comrade who has become a journalist and gets him a job on his newspaper. Handsome, with neither talent nor scruples, Duroy soon realises that women can open every door for him. Maupassant paints the portrait of a seducer who will stop at nothing to succeed, and shows plainly what goes on behind the scenes of the press, politics and money. With its lively chapters and clear style, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

At the start of the twentieth century, Emma Goldman, who came from Russia to the United States at sixteen, travels the country defending anarchism, the dream of a society without masters. In these essays she attacks prisons, patriotism, loveless marriage and Puritan hypocrisy, and defends women's right to decide their own lives. Born from her lectures, her writing is direct and hard-hitting. Even today it makes us think about what makes each of us truly free. With the translation always in front of you, you can read these committed texts in the language you are learning.

In his laboratory, Dr Raymond operates on the brain of a young girl, Mary, so that she can see the world hidden behind our own, what the ancients called “seeing the god Pan”. Years later, in London, men from good society take their own lives one after another, and each time the same woman seems to have crossed their path. Told in fragments, like an investigation, this short tale builds fear touch by touch. Lovecraft admired it, and it is one of the great classics of supernatural fiction. With the translation always in front of you, you can enjoy the shivers in the language you are learning.

Eleven stories about China in the 1920s. We meet a widow whom the whole village shuns at New Year, a disappointed scholar drinking alone in an inn, a young couple driven apart by poverty, and a man who wants to put out the everlasting lamp in his village temple. After “Call to Arms”, Lu Xun, the greatest modern Chinese writer, offers more intimate stories here, which show with tenderness and clarity a country in the midst of change. The stories are short and can be read one by one, in the language you are learning.

Around the year 400, Augustine, now Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, tells the story of his life, speaking directly to God. He remembers his childhood, the pears he stole just for the pleasure of doing wrong, his youth in Carthage and his long search for the truth. Until the day when, in a garden in Milan, he hears a child's voice singing: “Take up and read”. This book is often seen as the first great autobiography of the Western world. We meet a man who doubts, makes mistakes and searches for himself, with a sincerity that still moves us today. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic in the language you are learning.

Called out at night in a snowstorm, a country doctor has no horse to make the journey. In a penal colony, an officer proudly shows a visitor a strange execution machine. A hunger artist goes weeks without eating in his cage, while the crowd slowly loses interest. In these three unsettling stories by Kafka, everyday life tips into nightmare without warning, and you do not forget them. Short and written in precise sentences, they can each be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

Orphaned, Denise arrives in Paris from Normandy with her two young brothers. Her uncle, a small draper, is being ruined by the department store across the road, The Ladies' Paradise. Denise starts work there as a shop assistant, mocked by the other employees, and little by little catches the eye of the owner, the ambitious Octave Mouret. Huge departments, dazzling shop windows, customers spending freely: Zola tells of the birth of the department store, and the story of an upright young woman whom money cannot buy. With the translation always in front of you, this absorbing story is easy to read in the language you are learning.

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau starts from this observation and looks for a form of association in which each person, by uniting with all, obeys only himself. From this pact he draws a simple idea: power belongs to the people, and the law must express the will of all. Against those who based power on force or on divine right, Rousseau bases it on the agreement of citizens. This little book inspired the French Revolution, and it still helps us understand where our ideas of democracy and equality come from. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this founding text in the language you are learning.

In these texts gathered for the schoolchildren of the Philippines, José Rizal tells his own life: his childhood in Calamba, on the shore of a large lake, his mother teaching him to read in the evenings, the strict school in Biñan, then his success at college in Manila. Other pages tell of his travels, from Japan to England, and of his exile in Dapitan. We get to know the national hero of the Philippines from the inside, with proverbs, riddles and a legend from his country as well. Written in simple sentences, this little book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In 1845, Henry David Thoreau builds a cabin with his own hands beside Walden Pond, in the woods of Massachusetts, and lives there alone for two years. He grows beans, watches the seasons and the animals, and reduces his needs to the bare essentials. A book that invites you to ask what you really need in order to live. It has become a touchstone for everyone seeking a simpler, freer life, closer to nature. With the translation always in front of you, you can read it chapter by chapter, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

Saved from a shipwreck, Edward Prendick is put ashore on a remote island in the Pacific, home to a banished scientist, Dr Moreau, and his assistant. At night, screams come from the laboratory. The island's strange inhabitants recite a Law like a prayer: “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law.” H. G. Wells asks a question that is still with us: how far does science have the right to go, and what separates man from animal? Full of suspense, this novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In 1930, Jacques Bainville tells children the history of France in forty short chapters, from Vercingetorix to the Great War. We see Clovis and the Vase of Soissons, Joan of Arc before Orléans, Henri IV and his chicken in every pot, Napoleon at Austerlitz. The book tells stories rather than dates, with sixty-nine illustrations by Job, the great illustrator of his day. It is a simple and lively way into the history of France. Written for young readers, in simple sentences, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Three stories by Dostoevsky. In “White Nights”, a lonely young dreamer meets, four evenings in a row in the bright nights of St Petersburg, a young woman who is waiting for someone. In “A Gentle Creature”, a man keeps watch over the body of his young wife and tries to understand. In “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, a man in despair falls asleep and has a dream that changes everything. Tender, tragic or visionary, they show another side of the great Russian novelist. You can read each of these short stories in one sitting in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together four of Chekhov's finest stories. In “Ward No. 6”, a provincial doctor starts talking with a patient in his asylum and ends up wondering who is really mad. In “The Lady with the Dog”, a man and a woman, each married to someone else, meet in Yalta and fall into a love they had not foreseen. We also meet a bishop, alone and ill on the eve of Easter, and a young bride-to-be who decides to leave everything behind. Chekhov never judges: in a few pages, he makes you feel a whole life. You can read each of these stories in one sitting in the language you are learning.