Serpent's Tail Classics

The Course of the Heart
M. John Harrison
The strange edges of reality are explored in M John Harrison's extraordinary cult classic, now with an introduction by bestselling author Julia A…

Valencia
Michelle Tea
A fast-paced account of one year in San Francisco's underground scene, filled with sex, drugs and the never-ending search for true love.

The Assault
Harry Mulisch
The classic that sold over 200,000 copies in the Netherlands: a richly crafted novel of post-war innocence and guilt

Closer
Dennis Cooper
The brutally frank and daring gay classic from countercultural icon Dennis Cooper

Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo
A new translation of the legendary Mexican classic of magic realism which inspired the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa a…

Cold Nights of Childhood
Tezer Özlü
A lyrical autofictional account of the author's fight to survive depression and carve out her own path in 1950s and 60s Istanbul

Haruko/Love Poems
June Jordan
Searingly beautiful poems about compassion, resistance and desire by an iconic Black American activist and writer

The Impostor
Silvina Ocampo
Fantastical, unnerving short stories from a Surrealist master of the form

Passing
Nella Larsen
A classic of the Harlem Renaissance reissued to coincide with the major Netflix adaptation of Passing (2021)

To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life
Hervé Guibert
The cult classic that describes with devastating, darkly comic clarity the experience of living with and dying from AIDS

Man Enough to Be a Woman
Jayne County
The true story of trans punk performance art sensation Jayne County's wild and daring life

And the Band Played On
Randy Shilts
A masterpiece of investigative reporting on the AIDS crisis in the USA

Mysteries
Knut Hamsun
Serpent's Tail Classics edition of a wild masterpiece by a Nobel prize winner championed by influential writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and D…

Devil in a Blue Dress
Walter Mosley
The bestselling, award-winning first novel by the internationally acclaimed crime writer Walter Mosley introduces his most famous character – Easy Raw…

Selected Poems
Langston Hughes
Classics edition with new introduction by Kayo Chingonyi of the essential poems of 'the poet laureate of black America' New Yorker.

Eat My Heart Out
Zoe Pilger
Zoe Pilger's wildly funny debut novel, reissued as a Serpent's Tail Classic