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Title Author Description
book image Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol
Gogol
This tale of an affably cunning con who establishes a thriving trade in “dead souls”—serfs who though no longer alive can still, he finds, be profitably bought and sold—is also a brilliant spoof of a corrupt society, full of the living dead. This new translation captures Gogol’s linguistic invention and the anarchic fun of his writing.
Contributors: Donald Rayfield
book image Confusion
Confusion
Stefan Zweig
Zweig
Confusion is one of [Zweig’s] finest and most exemplary works…a perfect reminder of, or introduction to, Zweig’s economy and subtlety as a writer.” —Robert Macfarlane, The Times Literary Supplement
Contributors: George Prochnik , Anthea Bell
book image Amsterdam Stories
Amsterdam Stories
Nescio
Nescio
The first English-language translation of a writer whose growing reputation and cult readership have marked him as a figure in world literature. Nescio’s stories are inhabited by wastrels and charmers, the young and the no-longer-young, the bourgeois and the bohemian. He is a great stylist, capturing the mercantile city of Amsterdam and its bucolic surrounding countryside with equal vitality.
Contributors: Joseph O'Neill , Damion Searls
book image Berlin Stories
Berlin Stories
Robert Walser
Walser
Robert Walser lived in Berlin from 1905 to 1913. This newly translated collection brings together his alternately celebratory, droll, and satirical sketches of the bustling German capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters’ galleries, and literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram.
Contributors: Jochen Greven , Susan Bernofsky
book image An Ermine In Czernopol
Ermine in Czernopol
Gregor von Rezzori
Rezzori
The first of Rezzori’s three books based on memories of his Austro-Hungarian hometown, a “melting pot for dozens of ethnic groups, languages, creeds, temperaments, and customs.” While the story centers on the downfall of a once glamorous Hussar, it is really about childhood enchantment and the richness of a vanished world. “A flashing novel of ideas.” —Time
Contributors: Daniel Kehlmann , Philip Boehm
book image Proud Beggars
Proud Beggars
Albert Cossery
Cossery
Cossery’s proud beggars—a former university professor, a hashish-dealing poet, and a would-be revolutionary office-clerk—live on the fringes of Cairo society, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. Each is suspected in the death of a young prostitute, but the detective charged with getting to the truth of the crime finds that he is no match for this band of outsiders.
Contributors: Alyson Waters , Thomas W. Cushing
book image The Letter Killers Club
Letter Killers Club
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Krzhizhanovsky
Set in Moscow in the 1920s, this strange tale centers on the doings of a secret society of "Letter Killers"—who meet in a room of empty shelves to enact stories, committing nothing to paper. Krzhizhanovsky is at his philosophical and fantastical best in this extended meditation on madness and silence, the word and the soul unbound.
Contributors: Caryl Emerson , Joanne Turnbull
book image The Adventures of Sindbad
Adventures of Sindbad
Gyula Krúdy
Krudy
Rogue, romantic, and seducer, Sindbad, Krúdy's most famous creation, returns in dreams to lovers he has left, lovers who have died. The women in turn tell their stories, creating a beautifully melancholy vision of the twilight of the Habsburg Empire. “[Krúdy’s] literary power and greatness are almost past comprehension...” —Sándor Márai
Contributors: George Szirtes
book image The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irène Némirovsky by Her Daughter
Mirador
Élisabeth Gille
Gille
Élisabeth Gille was five years old when her mother, Irène Némirovsky, (whose Suite Française would be a surprise best-seller six decades later) died in Auschwitz. The Mirador is a lookout from which Gille reconstructs the story of her mother’s life, from child of privilege in Kiev, to renowned novelist, to fugitive in rural France. “[Gille] sets out to live in her mother’s head.” —The Nation
Contributors: Marina Harss
book image Fatale
Fatale
Jean-Patrick Manchette
Manchette
J.P. Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale, we watch with alternating horror and fascination as the deadly Aimée drifts into a sleepy provincial town, poised to make a killing.
Contributors: Jean Echenoz , Donald Nicholson-Smith