Penguin comes out with Evergreen series

New Delhi, Feb 12 (PTI) Abridged versions of 14classics and bestsellers by Indian writers and thinkers havebeen brought out by publishers Penguin under its Evergreensseries.

The books range across time and geography, featuringthose by ancient writers such as Valmiki, Vatsayana and Vyasaand modern and contemporaries like Premchand, Saadat HasanManto, R K Narayan and APJ Abdul Kalam.

The books are available at a price as low as Rs 99.

"We wanted to publish a very attractively priced listof books, deriving from classics and bestsellers by the mostrecognizable names, for both book lovers and non-traditionalreaders," says R Sivapriya, managing editor of Penguin BooksIndia.

"Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, believed inthe existence of ''a vast reading public for intelligent booksat a low price''. We are building on that original mission,"Sivapriya told PTI.

"The Evergreens are something like ''classics forbeginners'' comprising authors and books that everyone wants tohave read. We have made them appealing, accessible andaffordable."

The books are: ''Building a New India'' (Kalam);''Feluda'' (Satyajit Ray); ''Jungle Book'' (Rudyard Kipling);''Kabuliwallah'' (Rabindranath Tagore); ''The Kitemaker'' (RuskinBond); ''The Quilt'' (Ismat Chugtai); ''Toba Tek Singh'' (Manto);''The Shroud'' (Premchand); ''Malgudi Days'' (Narayan); ''The Markof Vishnu'' (Khushwant Singh); ''My Experiments with Truth''(Mahatma Gandhi); ''Valmiki Ramayana: The Book of Wilderness'';''Mahabharata: Draupadi''s Marriage and other selections'' andVatsyayana''s ''Kamasutra''.