Abridged Classics

A collection of irreverent summations of more than one hundred well-known works of literature, accompanied with funny color illustrations.

From Anna Karenina to Wuthering Heights, Abridged Classics: Brief Summaries of Books You Were Supposed to Read but Probably Didn't is packed with dozens of humorous super-condensed summations—cleverly described in the fewest words possible—of some of the most famous works of literature by many of the world's most revered authors.

From “Old ladies convince a guy to ruin Scotland” (Macbeth) to “Everyone is sad. It snows.” (War and Peace), these clever, humorous synopses of stories by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, J. R. R. Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, James Joyce, Plato, Ernest Hemingway, Dan Brown, Ayn Rand, Herman Melville, and more are sure to make book lovers smile.