The skeleton's holiday

'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.