A Tale of Two Cities

Jan 16, 2026 7:26 PM

Author:Charles Dickens,Richard Maxwell

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

Reviews

The Tale of Murasaki brings vividly to life the fascinating eleventh-century world of the creator of Japan's enduring masterpiece, Tale of Genji

—— Arthur Golden, author of 'Memoirs of a Geisha'

Enter the exotic, entrancing world of the Japanese Imperial court...for a gentle immersion in a world of long ago and far away, The Tale of Murasaki is just the ticket...hypnotic

—— The Times

Luscious, lush and languorously elegant... You feel you are breathing the air of 11th-century Japan

—— USA Today

Captivating... The Tale of Murasaki gets the big things right, including, indispensably, the dark undercurrent of sadness running below the bright, embroidered surface... All this, and much more, rings so true to the created milieu of Genji that one is inclined to indulge Dalby in all she has dreamed or imagined

—— Washington Post Book World

An amazing feat... Anyone already an enthusiast either of Tale of Genji or of Arthur Golden’s wonderful Memoirs of a Geisha will already be running to the bookstore for this book... A wonderful accomplishment

—— Newsday

Liza Dalby is not just a remarkable scholar of Japan – she is a keen storyteller

—— Arthur Golden, author of 'Memoirs of a Geisha'

This is poignant, quirky and delightfully original

—— Woman & Home

Confirms that she's a writer to watch

—— Bella

A delightful tale

—— Good Housekeeping

This is an assured second novel - and wonderful company for that long-overdue summer trip

—— Press Assocation

Imaginative and transporting, but entirely unfussy and unsentimental, the novel is written with a glint in the eye that gives it that extra bit of wind beneath its wings

—— Nicola Barr , Guardian

Wilson has done his research impeccably and he writes superbly well

—— Literary Review

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