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Sep 12, 2025 8:37 AM

Author:John Ruskin

Traffic

'You shall have thousands of gold pieces; - thousands of thousands - millions - mountains of gold: where will you keep them?'

Two of Ruskin's most powerful essays: 'Traffic' and 'The Roots of Honour'

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

John Ruskin (1819-1900). Ruskin's Unto This Last and Other Writings is available in Penguin Classics.

Reviews

Kameron Hurley is ferociously imaginative - with an emphasis on ferocious. She writes novels that are smart, dark, visceral and wonderfully, hectically entertaining.

—— Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls

Edge-of-the-seat action set within a strange and alien world that's the mutant child of Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny. At her best, Hurley's work rivals that of Gene Wolfe, and it burns like a drug in the mind long after you've finished it.

—— David J. Williams, author of The Mirrored Heavens

Middleton's latest novel is nevertheless an illuminating examinatio n of middle class mores. Small Change also offers an insight into the mind of the kind of fortysomething over-acheiver who thought he was indestructible - but who gradually faces up to his own mortality.

—— Nottingham Evening Post

An astonishing piece of work. Christie combines lyrical prose and true-to-life characters—and skateboarding—to craft a remarkable tale of mothers and sons, and what it means to grow up.

—— Philipp Meyer, author of The Son

There are moments of real tenderness, and real strangeness too, as Will gradually embraces risk and seeks friendship. It feels less part of some sub-genre cooked up by the marketing department than a contribution to a real, archetypal literary tradition, that of the coming-of-age story.

—— Spectator

If I Fall, If I Die is an expertly crafted work of great heart and sensitivity. I can’t recall a truer or more beautiful debut.

—— Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers

A bruiser of a tale, one you will feel in your shins and your solar plexus. Michael Christie is a virtuosic prose stylist and boy is he so very wise and so funny on families and friendships, fear and joy, and the physics of sky and pavement. If I Fall, If I Die is a death-defying coming of age story; it’s also as weird and as convincing a love story as I have ever read. And so beautifully told that you’ll want to pass it on immediately.

—— Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

A lyrically descriptive tale with an endearing young protagonist

—— Choice magazine

Beautiful … [a] wonderful, quirky, eccentric book full of wit and spectacular prose. If you are looking for a unique read which you can immerse yourself in, with stimulating language and characters to latch on to and love, then If I Fall, If I Die needs to be your next book purchase. A book that I will go back to and read again and a stunning first novel from Michael Christie. A wonderful treasure of a book.

—— Duffythewriter

The reader alternates between knowing more than the characters and searching to unravel the mystery, with creative prose and incremental pay-offs, the 300 pages of Christie’s captivating debut novel fly by

—— Press Association syndicated review

This is a harrowing, but gripping love story

—— Good Book Guide

Wonderfully enticing.

—— Lucian Robinson , Literary Review

Individual scenes are often gripping, shocking or moving.

—— John Harding , Daily Mail

The bloody horrors of conflict are captured with visceral aplomb in this fine, minimalist novel.

—— i

Some of the most vividly evoked battle scenes I've read – he doesn't shy away from taking risks … chilling and touching all at the same time.

—— John Preston , Evening Standard

Foulds has the literary intelligence to turn the commonplace on its head.

—— Alberto Manguel , Guardian

A high-class thriller … Foulds has a literary novelist's feel for [Sicily's] harsh beauty.

—— Mail on Sunday

Foulds’ prose is superb… It reads like Catch-22 written by Evelyn Waugh.

—— Good Book Guide

It’s an ambitious book and the writer relates his story with poetic precision

—— i (The paper for today)

Told in a language that is both lyrical and stark The Tusk that Did the Damage should win Tania James praise and laurels from those readers who long for a more penetrating look at environmental issues and the moral questions which accompany them’.

—— Joe Phelan , Bookmunch
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