By day Franz Kafka worked as a lawyer for an insurance company, but he spent his nights writing visionary stories and novels exploring bureaucracy, power and alienation – iconic fiction that gave the world the adjective ‘Kafkaesque’. This BBC anthology showcases his most famous works, dealing with ordinary men caught up in impossible situations.

One of postwar France’s most influential writers, Albert Camus was fêted for his masterful exploration of the absurdity of the human condition. Included here are adaptations of his three iconic existential novels – The Plague, The Outsider and The Fall – alongside four bonus pieces shining a light on the man and his work.

Guy de Maupassant is renowned as one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protégé of Flaubert, he was celebrated for his naturalistic fiction, and wrote over 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books and one volume of verse in his short but highly productive lifetime. He died in an asylum aged just 43. This collection brings together dramatisations of some of his finest works.

This brilliant collection of France’s foremost nineteenth-century novelist and playwright delivers four of his most fascinating works - stories of love, rivalry, horror and adventure - all brought to life by a stellar cast included Stephen Fry and Alex Kingston. A huge influence on many of the most famous writers from Proust to Kerouac to Dickens, Balzac delivers beautifully observed and complex characters with an unsurpassed attention to the details of society at the time, making him an exemplary of realism in European literature.

Philosopher, pacifist, psychonaut and prophet Aldous Huxley was one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent intellectuals and writers. The author of over 50 books, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize nine times, and elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962, a year before his death. Known for his mordant satire and visionary ideas, Huxley spanned the period from post-First World War disillusionment to mid-century mysticism, and the works in this collection reflect his literary evolution.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

Deviant. Depraved. Dangerous. Denounced for their transgressive themes and inflammatory ideas, these 20th-century classics have all been considered so seditious that they had to be suppressed. Find out what made these iconic works so threatening to governments worldwide in these superlative dramatisations, featuring stellar casts and specially composed music.

Eugene O'Neill’s revolutionary 20th century dramas changed the direction of American theatre, introducing European realism and experimental techniques to the US stage. He wrote more than 50 plays, portraying characters on the margins of society and tackling controversial issues, winning a Nobel Prize, and four Pulitzer Prizes.

One of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece, Sophocles wrote over 120 plays during his 60-year career, though only seven survive today. The most famous of these are the Theban Plays, all three of which are included in this collection alongside adaptations of Electra and Philoctetes, brought to life by celebrated writers, poets, and playwrights.

The master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe has inspired generations of horror writers with his chilling Gothic tales and is also credited with inventing the detective fiction genre in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'. This radio collection features five of his classic tales - 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Tell-Tale Heart', 'The Oblong Box', 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'The Masque of the Red Death'.

Enthralling radio dramatisations of eight of Charles Dickens' much-loved novels. Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned authors of all time, and this second digital volume of the dramatised canon of his work includes eight of his classic novels. This collection includes the epic masterpiece David Copperfield, described by Dickens as his 'favourite child'; suspenseful mystery Bleak House; Dickens' most openly political novel, Hard Times; and Little Dorrit.