Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe (Penguin, £9.99 in the UK) is an epic novel that captures the restlessness of the modern American and conveys the vastness and variety of the continent. Set in small-town America, the novel chronicles the life of Eugene Gant, a young man growing to manhood at the turn of the 19th century.

Throughout the novel he searches for a sense of identity and enduring values in American society. His path is inglorious, his success tenuous, but Eugene is shown as completing a bittersweet journey. Emotionally majestic and spiritually moving, even 80 years after its first publication this book has lost none of its power as a social document, a historical testimony or a work of literary art.