'Ring for your maid, and when she comes in we'll pounce upon her and tear off her face. I'll wear her face tonight instead of mine.' These dreamlike, carnivalesque fables by one of the leading lights of the Surrealist movement are masterpieces of invention and grand-guignol humour. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

The Hearing Trumpet is the story of 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, who is given the gift of a hearing trumpet only to discover that what her family is saying is that she is to be committed to an institution. But this is an institution where the buildings are shaped like birthday cakes and igloos, where the Winking Abbess and the Queen Bee reign, and where the gateway to the underworld is open. It is also the scene of a mysterious murder. Occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, The Hearing Trumpet is a classic of fantastic literature that has been translated and celebrated throughout the world.

Elena Poniatowska is recognised today as one of Mexico's greatest writers. 'Lilus Kikus,' published in 1954, was her first book. However, it was labelled a children's book because it had a young girl as protagonist, it included illustrations, and the author was an unknown woman. 'Lilus Kikus' has not received the critical attention or a translation into English it deserved, until now. Accompanying 'Lilus Kikus' in this first American edition are four of Poniatowska's short stories with female protagonists, only one of which has been previously published in English. Poniatowska is admired today as a feminist, but in 1954, when 'Lilus Kikus' appeared, feminism didn't have broad appeal. Twenty-first-century readers will be fascinated by the way Poniatowska uses her child protagonist to point out the flaws in adult society. Each of the drawings by the great surrealist Leonora Carrington that accompany the chapters in 'Lilus Kikus' expresses a subjective, interiorised vision of the child character's contemplations on life.