Literature

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Ulrich Baer In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters — an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind Rilke's greatest poetry. The ten letters reproduced here were written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, and they contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. The poet himself afterwards stated that his letters contained part of his creative genius, making this volume essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse.Hardcover74 pagesInsel Verlag GmbH, 2018Originally published in 19294.8 x 7.4 inchesISBN 9783458194507 Classic Literature

Letters to a Young Poet

Written and Illustrated by Nicolas MahlerTranslated by Alexander Booth "If you are Nicolas Mahler, the writer and illustrator of a short but engaging graphic biography of the man, you’d see [Kafka] as a sort of blob of hair and eyebrows on a stick. The illustrations of Completely Kafka may look rudimentary, but they work. In fact they’re similar in style to the doodles Kafka himself would make in his notebooks."—Spectator "Much the best thing about the book are the charming black and white drawings. The best are the drawings of Kafka himself, drawn in thick brushstroke. Some are like cartoons, a few are more like Kafka’s own drawings, angular, isolated."—Jewish Chronicle A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death The young Franz Kafka has too many fears to name. Mirrors, clothing, his own body, almost everything causes him to fret. How did this ‘anxious and small bundle of bones’ become one of the world’s great writers? With telling details and sharply minimal illustrations, Nicolas Mahler tells a wickedly funny story of the development of Kafka’s genius, offering a tribute that is as playful as it is profound. Paperback128 pages Pushkin Press, 20245.35 x 8.44 inchesISBN 9781805331582Biography, Historic Graphic Novel

Completely Kafka: A Comic Biography

By Theodor Fontane and Hugh RorrisonAfterword by Helen Chambers An exceptional translation of Fontane’s masterpiece: one of the great 19th-century novels of adultery to stand beside Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary “A stunningly moving, beautiful, witty and urbane novel: I was blown away by it”— Kate Saunders, author of The Secrets of Wishtide In this witty masterpiece of poetic realism, expertly translated by Hugh Rorrison, Effi Briest shows Theodor Fontane at the height of his talents, as he questions the hypocrisies and destructive values of middle-class society. Effi Briest is only 17 when she is married off to Baron von Innstetten, travelling to live with him in a provincial town on the remote Baltic coast of Prussia. He is 20 years her senior, an ambitious bureaucrat uninterested in his young wife, and lively Effi becomes increasingly isolated, bored and anxious in her stifling surroundings. A half-hearted affair with Major Crampas – a manipulative married man with a reputation for womanising – temporarily distracts Effi from her loneliness. But years later, this brief liaison will return to Effi with devastating consequences. Written with great empathy for his characters, Fontane portrays a woman torn between her own desires and her roles as wife and mother, between her heart and the obligations of social circumstance. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: outstanding classic storytelling from around the world, in a stylishly original series design. From newly rediscovered gems to fresh translations of the world’s greatest authors, this series includes such authors as Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Gaito Gazdanov. Paperback224 pagesPushkin Press Classics, 2024Originally published in 18955.1 x 7.1 inchesISBN 9781805331599Historical Fiction

Effi Briest

By Franz KafkaTranslated by Idris Parry A brilliant translation of one of the greatest works of Franz Kafka, author of Metamorphosis, telling the haunting story of a man’s desperate search for answers amid his prosecution for an unknown crime. A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis—an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life—including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door—becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. Paperback208 pagesPenguin Random House, 2024Originally published in 19255-1/16 x 7-3/4 inchesISBN 9780241678893Literature

The Trial (Penguin Classics)

By Franz KafkaIntroduction by Idris ParryTranslated by J. A. Underwood An acclaimed translation of the final work by Franz Kafka—author of Metamorphosis and some of the twentieth century’s greatest literature—following the story of a man’s bizarre, unending struggle to carry out his mysterious new job The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted land surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.’s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete. Paperback320 PagesPenguin Classics, 2024Originally Published in 19265-1/16 x 7-3/4 InchesISBN 9780241678916Literature, Fiction

The Castle (Penguin Classics)

By Rainer Maria Rilke Over the course of six years, Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. This volume also contains the 'Letter from a Young Worker', a striking polemic against Christianity written too in letter form. Hardcover128 pagesPenguin Clothbound Classics, 20234.49 x 0.55 x 6.46 inchesISBN 9780241620038 German Poetry

By Arthur Schnitzler Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. Like his Austrian contemporary Sigmund Freud, the doctor and writer Arthur Schnitzlerwas a bold pioneer in exploring the dark tangled roots of human consciousness. His novella Dream Story tells the tale of a young married man who, after a discussion with his wife about their fantasies, experiences an eery reverie through Vienna's underbelly. Hardcover160 PagesPenguin Clothbound Classics, 20234.72 x 0.79 x 6.57 inchesISBN 9780241620229Vienna, Literary Fiction

Dream Story

By Cathleen Schine An NPR Best Book of the Year "A moving and entertaining novel about how we revisit memories to make meaning for ourselves and others. . . . Ms. Schine has a wonderful ability to weave research and substantive ideas into her novels without weighing them down. Her buoyant dialogue has the zip of great comedy routines." ―Wall Street Journal "Künstlers in Paradise is a tender family story, but it is also a profound meditation on the nature and power of storytelling, inheritance, and legacy, the malleability and perdurability of memory." ―Boston Globe There was a time when the family Künstler lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Circumstances transformed the fairy tale into a nightmare, and in 1939 the Künstlers found their way out of Vienna and into a new fairy tale: Los Angeles, California, United States of America. For years Mamie Künstler, ninety-three years old, as clever and glamorous as ever, has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California, with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson Julian arrives from New York City. Like many a twentysomething, he has come to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the global pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight. Mamie was only eleven when the Künstlers escaped Vienna in 1939. They made their way, stunned and overwhelmed, to sunny, surreal Los Angeles, where they joined a colony of distinguished Jewish musicians, writers, and intellectuals also escaping Hitler. Now, faced with months of lockdown and a willing listener, Mamie begins to tell Julian the buried stories of her years in Los Angeles: her escapades with eminent émigrés like Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Mann. Oh, and Greta Garbo. While the pandemic cuts Julian off from the life he knows, Mamie’s tales open up a world of lives that came before him. They reveal to him just how much the past holds of the future. Paperback272 pagesHolt Paperbacks, 20247.15 x 0.7 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9781250892492Historical Fiction

Künstlers in Paradise [Paperback]

By Alexander Lernet-Holenia Translated by Ignat Avsey “The cast of this brilliant thriller … are pure Raymond Chandler … but the Viennese setting gives it an extra, stylish twist. It’s excellently written and fearsomely gripping.”—Kate Saunders, The Times “A terrific fast-moving book. . . a truly clever, rather wonderful book that both plays with and defies genre”—Irish Times “A fascinating snapshot of Vienna between the wars, pacey and entertaining.”—Laura Wilson, Guardian A taxi-driver in 1930s Vienna impersonates a murder victim, and is caught into a dangerous spiral Twice adapted for film, I Was Jack Mortimer is a tale of misappropriated identity as darkly captivating and twisting as the books of Patricia Highsmith. “One doesn’t step into anyone’s life, not even a dead man’s, without having to live it to the end.” A man climbs into Ferdinand Sponer’s cab, gives the name of a hotel, and before he reaches it has been murdered: shot through the throat. And though Sponer has so far committed no crime, he is drawn into the late Jack Mortimer’s life, and might not be able to escape its tangles and intrigues before it is too late… Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: outstanding classic storytelling from around the world, in a stylishly original series design. From newly rediscovered gems to fresh translations of the world’s greatest authors, this series includes such authors as Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Gaito Gazdanov. Paperback160 pagesPushkin Press Classics, 20245 x 7 inchesISBN 9781805330370Thriller, Crime, Literary Fiction

I Was Jack Mortimer

By Franz KafkaTranslated and Edited by Mark Harman"The translations are surely definitive – Harman’s grasp of the German language is as comprehensive as was the Czech-born Kafka’s – but the prime value of the book is in the annotation. Every nuance of language is flagged, every cross-reference is followed up, every subtle shade of humour is highlighted. This is academic work as it should be done, in faithful service to the text and to its readers."― John Banville, The Guardian “Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating references to contemporary sources, critical commentary and relevant passages from Kafka’s letters and diaries…Anyone interested in knowing more about these stories will find this volume a treasure trove.”―Karen Leeder, Times Literary Supplement “[This book] gives us crisp new translations of Franz Kafka’s best novellas and tales and also a substantial scholarly introduction to his life and work…Ironies…lurk in Kafka’s fiction: in dry, dispassionate sentences that deliver disconcerting changes of perspective and in slyly matter-of-fact descriptions of uncanny events. Harman’s translations recreate these subtle effects with admirable precision; and by uncovering the veins of humour and hope in Kafka’s dark art, he may well win new readers for this gentle master of the absurd.”―Joachim Redner, Australian Book Review A superb new translation of Kafka’s classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated. Selected Stories presents new, exquisite renderings of short works by one of the indisputable masters of the form. Award-winning translator and scholar Mark Harman offers the most sensitive English rendering yet of Franz Kafka’s unique German prose—terse, witty, laden with ambiguities and double meanings. With his in-depth biographical introduction and notes illuminating the stories and placing them in context, Harman breathes new life into masterpieces that have often been misunderstood. Included are sixteen stories, arranged chronologically to convey a sense of Kafka’s artistic development. Some, like “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Hunger Artist,” and “The Transformation” (usually, though misleadingly, translated as “The Metamorphosis”), represent the pinnacle of Kafka’s achievement. Accompanying annotations highlight the wordplay and cultural allusions of the original German, pregnant with irony and humor that English readers have often missed. Although Kafka has frequently been cast as a loner, in part because of his quintessential depictions of modern alienation, he had a number of close companions. Harman draws on Kafka’s diaries, extensive correspondence, and engagement with early twentieth-century debates about Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and Zionism to construct a rich portrait of Kafka in his world. A work of both art and scholarship, Selected Stories transforms our understanding and appreciation of a singular imagination. Hardcover304 pagesBelknap Press, 20245.5 x .87 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9780674737983 Franz Kafka, Short Stories

Selected Stories

Contributions by Tommy Orange, Ali Smith, Naomi Alderman, Elif Batuman and Helen OyeyemiWhat happens when Kafka’s idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? Find out in this anthology of brand-new Kafka-inspired short stories by prizewinning, bestselling writers.Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. He’s been hailed a profit and a diagnostician, and a century after his death, his unique perspective on the anxieties, injustices, and rapidly shifting belief systems of the modern world continues to speak to our contemporary moment. From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to an apartment search that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting. Inspired by a twentieth-century visionary, they speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.Paperback208 pagesCatapult, 20245.5 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9781646222636 Franz Kafka, Short Story Anthology

A Cage Went in Search of a Bird (Ten Kafkaesque Short Stories)

Edited by Richard Bassett A gorgeously jacketed hardcover anthology of stories set in Prague, by an international array of brilliant writers. The Golden City of Prague has long been an intellectual center of the western world. The writers collected here range from the early nineteenth century to the present and include both Prague natives and visitors from elsewhere. Here are stories, legends, and scenes from the city’s past and present, from the Jewish fable of the golem, a creature conjured from clay, to tales of German and Soviet invasions. The international array of writers ranges from Franz Kafka to Ivan Klíma to Bruce Chatwin, and includes the award-winning British playwright Tom Stoppard and former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both of whom have Czech roots. Covering the city’s venerable Jewish heritage, the glamour of the belle-époque period, World War II, Communist rule, the Prague Spring, the Velvet Revolution, and beyond, Prague Stories weaves a remarkable selection of fiction and nonfiction into a literary portrait of a fascinating city. Hardcover416 pagesEveryman's Library, 20204 .5 x 7.25 inchesISBN 9780525659570Classical Fiction

Prague Stories (Everyman's Pocket Library)

By Hannah ArendtTranslated and edited by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill "A new volume of [Arendt’s] poetry reveals that the author of sobering works like The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition was writing ardent and intimate verse in her off-hours."- Srikanth Reddy, The Paris Review A landmark literary event, What Remains collects Arendt’s complete poetic oeuvre—never before published in English. Internationally renowned as one of the twentieth century’s foremost public intellectuals, Hannah Arendt was also intensely private. Though she often acknowledged that the language of poetry—especially that of Dickinson, Goethe, and Lowell—informed her work, only a few people knew that Arendt herself wrote poems. In fact, between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote seventy-four poems, many of them signposts in an otherwise unwritten autobiography. For nearly forty years after her death, these poems remained hidden among the archives of the Library of Congress, until 2011, when they were rediscovered by scholar and translator Samantha Rose Hill. Now, for the first time in English, Hill and Genese Grill present Arendt’s poems in chronological order, taking us from the zenith of the Weimar Republic to the Cold War, and from Marburg, Germany, to New York’s Upper West Side. Throughout, Arendt uses poetry to mark moments of joy, love, loss, and reflection. In “W. B.,” written in 1942, she remembers Walter Benjamin, who died near the French-Spanish border while attempting to flee the Nazis: “Gentle whispering melodies / Sound from the darkness. / We listen so we can let go.” So, too, she reflects on mutability and transience in 1946: “I know that the houses have fallen. / We entered the world in them, wonderfully sure, that they / were more durable than ourselves.” She tries to understand her place in the world: “Ironically foolish, / I’ve forgotten nothing, / I know the emptiness, / I know the burden, / I dance, I dance / In ironic splendor.” A gift to all readers of Arendt, this stunning, dual-language edition provides an unparalleled view into the inner sanctum of one of our most original thinkers. Hardcover208 PagesLiveright, 20245.8 x 0.8 x 8.6 inchesISBN 9781324090526 Poetry, Hannah Arendt

What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt

By Erich Maria Remarque Introduction by Sebastian Faulks Widely acclaimed as the greatest war novel of all time, this classic tale of a young German soldier’s harrowing experiences in the trenches of World War I is the basis for an Academy Award-winning film. With an introduction by bestselling author Sebastian Faulks. When twenty-year-old Paul Bäumer and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under the first brutal bombardment in the trenches. Through the ensuing years of horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another. Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel not only portrays in vivid detail the combatants’ physical and mental trauma, but dramatizes as well the tragic detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home. Remarque’s stated intention–“to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war”–remains as powerful and relevant as ever, a century after that conflict’s end. Paperback224 pagesRandom House, Inc.Originally published in 19295.17 x 0.66 x 8 inchesISBN 9780593688670 Literature, Historical Fiction

All Quiet on the Western Front

By Paul CelanEdited by Bertrand BadiouTranslated by Jason Kavett Insightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet’s process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s. One of the most significant European poets of the twentieth century, Paul Celan came from an Eastern European Jewish family and lost his parents to the death camps of World War II. Transplanted to Paris, he produced a body of work that was an ongoing confrontation with that history of loss and with the German language. His poems, anguished and unsleeping, have by now been translated into many languages, becoming a touchstone for poets, writers, and philosophers. Letters to Gisèle presents the letters Celan wrote to his wife, the French visual artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, over the course of close to twenty years, along with letters to the couple’s son, Eric, and letters from Gisèle to Paul. They provide an intimate view of his literary career and troubled life, which was marked by repeated stays in psychiatric clinics. They also provide an unparalleled glimpse into Celan’s poetic workshop, including his own word-for-word renderings from German into French of more than a dozen of his poems. These he addressed to Gisèle as an ongoing, informal German lesson. They figure too as messages from the heart. Presented here trilingually, these overlapping versions of Celan’s poems open up new dimensions of his famously hermetic poetry, as dazzling as it is dark. This edition includes some poems in the original German and Celan’s own translations of them. Paperback544 pagesNYRB Poets, 20245.71 x 1.31 x 8.18 inchesISBN 9781681378305Letters, Essays

Letters to Gisèle

By Thomas Mann “A classic novella about one man’s infatuation with a young boy’s ideal beauty as cholera sweeps through the canals of Venice, emptying the hotels and quieting the streets.” —Jillian Kravatz, Boston Magazine A "brilliant . . . perfectly nuanced translation" (The Boston Globe) of Thomas Mann's greatest short works Featuring his world-famous masterpiece, "Death in Venice," this collection of Nobel laureate Thomas Mann's stories and novellas reveals his artistic evolution. In a widely acclaimed translation that restores the controversial passages that were censored from the original English version, "Death in Venice" tells about a ruinous quest for love and beauty amid degenerating splendor. Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but lonely author, travels to the Queen of the Adriatic in search of an elusive spiritual fulfillment that turns into his erotic doom. Spellbound by a beautiful Polish boy, he finds himself fettered to this hypnotic city of sun-drenched sensuality and eerie physical decay as it gradually succumbs to a secret epidemic. Also included in this volume are eleven other stories by Mann: "Tonio Kroger," "Gladius Dei," "The Blood of the Walsungs," "The Will for Happiness," "Little Herr Friedmann," "Tobias Mindernickel," "Little Lizzy," "Tristan," "The Starvelings," "The Wunderkind," and "Harsh Hour." All of the stories collected here display Mann's inimitable use of irony, his subtle characterizations, and superb, complex plots. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Paperback384 pagesPenguin Classics, 1999Originally Published in 19125 x 7.7 InchesISBN 9780141181738German Literature

Death in Venice and Other Tales

By Sasho DimoskiTranslated by Paul Filev Alma Mahler presents the imagined memories of a talented, passionate woman living in the shadow of a famous husband. The novel deals with Alma's marriage to the distant and introverted Gustav Mahler and with the many intellectual and emotional sacrifices Alma makes in order to be a support for him. Alma Mahler presents the imagined memories of a talented, passionate woman living in the shadow of a famous husband. The novel deals with Alma's marriage to the distant and introverted Gustav Mahler, the Austrian late-Romantic composer and conductor, and with the many intellectual and emotional sacrifices Alma makes in order to be a support for him. Throughout, Alma wrestles with the tension between her desire to be near genius and her growing awareness that all she will ever receive in return for her sacrifice are the great man's silence and the pains of solitude. Paperback152 pagesDalkey Archive Press, 20185 x 8 inchesISBN 9781628972368 Historical Fiction, Literature

Alma Mahler

By Robert SeethalerTranslated by Katy Derbyshire “Calming, gentle and unsentimental.”—The Guardian “A reminder of the strength and importance of human connections.”—New York Journal of Books Warm, fleeting, and profoundly human.”—Independent Book Review “A humble café in post-World War II Vienna serves as backdrop for all the large and small dramas of everyday life in this subtly scintillating novel... While Seethaler's characters face significant difficulties, the story never feels grim, but rather steadfast and even hopeful. Katy Derbyshire translates Seethaler’s prose from the German with calm delivery, charming descriptions, and understated humor. This lovely novel sweetly and simply emphasizes built family, resilience, and rebirth.”—Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness From one of Austria’s most beloved and best-selling authors, comes this vibrant tale of love, companionship, and renewal set against the transformations of 1960s Vienna. Summer 1966. Robert Simon is in his early thirties and has a dream: to open a café that welcomes all kinds of customers. Raised in a home for war orphans, Robert has miraculously grown into a warm-hearted, hard-working, and determined man. When the corner café in the Carmelite market square closes, Robert realizes that his chance has come. The place, dark and dilapidated, is in a poor neighborhood of the Austrian capital, but for some time now a new wind has been blowing, and the air is filled with an inexplicable energy and a desire for renewal. In the newspapers with which fishmongers wrap the char and trout from the Danube, one can read about great things to come, a bright future beginning to rise from the quagmire of the past. Enlivened by these promises, Robert refurbishes the café, painting the walls, varnishing the furniture, and polishing the stove plates. Rewarding Robert’s efforts and in search of a congenial place to gather, talk, read, or just sit and be, customers arrive, bringing their stories of passions, friendships, abandonments, and bereavements. Some are in search of company, others long for love, or just a place where they can feel understood. As the city is transformed, Robert's café becomes at once a place of refuge and one from which to observe and rejoice. Combining the enchantment of warm prose with tender humor, Robert Seethaler has written a charming parable of human existence animated by unforgettable characters and a kaleidoscope of human stories. Hardcover208 pagesEuropa Editions, 20255.28 x 8.27 inchesISBN 9798889660644Literary Fiction

The Café with No Name

By Hermann HesseTranslated and afterword by David Horrocks A Penguin Classic Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s iconic countercultural novel about the search for authenticity in an inauthentic world, in a new translation At first glance, Harry Haller seems like a respectable, educated man. In reality, he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society, and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters—accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe, and the bewitching Hermione—the misanthropic Haller undergoes a spiritual, even psychedelic, journey, and ultimately discovers a higher truth and the possibility of happiness. This blistering portrait of a man who feels himself to be half human and half wolf was the bible of the 1960s counterculture, capturing the mood of a disaffected generation. It continues to resonate as a haunting story of estrangement, redemption, and the search for one’s place in the world. Paperback256 pagesPenguin Classics, 2025Originally published in 19275.06 x 7.75 inchesISBN 9780143137825Classic Fiction

Steppenwolf

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated from the German by Vita Sackville-West & Edward Sackville-WestIntroduction by Lesley Chamberlain The first-ever English translation of Rilke’s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West ­– reissued for the first time in 90 years In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press published a small run of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, in English translation by the writers Vita and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke’s masterpiece, which would eventually be rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. Published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests’ translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of Rilke’s poetry cycle. Featuring a new introduction from critic Lesley Chamberlain, this reissue casts one of European literature’s great masterpieces in fresh light. Paperback109 pagesPushkin Press, 2025Originally published in 19235.11 x 0.37 x 7.77 inchesISBN 9781782277804Poetry

Duino Elegies (Paperback)

By Amor Towles “A book that enchants on first reading and only improves on the second.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “Towles gets good mileage from the considerable charm of his protagonist and the peculiar world he inhabits.”— The New Yorker In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Paperback496 pagesPenguin Books, 20191.3 x 5.4 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9780143110439Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

A Gentleman In Moscow

By Walter SernerIntroduction and translation by Erik Butler "These ‘outlandish’ stories relate casual pranks and complicated grifts that are by turns comic and calamitous: some read like games of Cluedo with the players amped up on coke, while others suggest scenes pulled from a film noir, a genre they anticipate by twenty years."―London Review of Books, Hal Foster "At the Blue Monkey offers pieces of a life that don’t fit together, its mystery never solved. There’s no closure to speak of, but if it raises any questions about the nature of fiction and life, its job is done." ―Spectrum Culture, Pat Padua Walter Serner’s first story collection, published in German in 1921, brought to narrative form the philosophy of his earlier Dada manifesto/handbook, Last Loosening: A Handbook for the Con Artist & Those Who Wish to Be One—life is a con job and demands the skills of a swindler. With its depiction of a world of appearances in which nothing can be trusted, At the Blue Monkey helped establish the ex-doctor and renounced Dadaist as a literary “Maupaussant of crime” and offers in this first English translation 33 stories of criminals, con artists and prostitutes engaged in varieties of financial insolvency, embezzlement, sexual hijinks, long and short cons, and dalliances with venereal diseases and drugs. Told in a baroque, sometimes baffling poetry of underworld slang in an urban world of bars and rent-a-rooms, these short tales are presented to the reader like so many three-card Montes in which readers come to realize too late that they may well themselves be the literary mark. Paperback192 pagesWakefield Press, 20205.5 x 8 inchesISBN 9781939663467Literature & Fiction, Short Stories

At The Blue Monkey: 33 Outlandish Stories

By Jeremias Gotthelf Translated by H.M. Waidson After one of their own people repeatedly fails to live up to a pact with the Devil, a petty and morally bankrupt village community is plagued by a swarm of deadly black spiders. Using a complex narrative structure, Gotthelf's cautionary novella shrewdly dissects the iniquitous social dynamics of rural life. First published in 1842, The Black Spider displays its author's talent for dark satire and realism, as well as the visionary powers of his imagination. Paperback128 pagesMacMillan Publishing Services, 2025Originally published in 18428 x 5 inchesISBN 9781847499240Literature

The Black Spider

By Hans FalladaTranslated and Adapted by Alistair Beaton A gripping portrait of life in wartime Berlin and a vividly theatrical study of how paranoia can warp a society gripped by the fear of the night-time knock on the door. Based on true events, Hans Fallada's Alone In Berlin follows a quietly courageous couple, Otto and Anna Quangel who, in dealing with their own heartbreak, stand up to the brutal reality of the Nazi regime. With the smallest of acts, they defy Hitler's rule with extraordinary bravery, facing the gravest of consequences. Translated and Adapted by Alistair Beaton (Feelgood, The Trial Of Tony Blair), this timely story of the moral power of personal resistance sees the Gestapo launch a massive hunt for the perpetrators and Otto and Anna finding themselves players in a deadly game of cat and mouse. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Royal and Derngate Theatre in February 2020. Paperback120 pagesMethuen Drama, 20208 x 5 inchesISBN 9781350172401Hans Fallada, Plays

Alone in Berlin

By Hermann HesseTranslated from the German by Kurt Beals "A sharp, erudite new translation of Hesse’s moody classic." ―Susan Bernofsky, Columbia University, and translator of The Metamorphosis "An English-language translation that highlights both the thoughtfulness and, ultimately, the sheer personal power of the original. Beals has managed the considerable feat of making a cult classic of twentieth-century literature feel completely alive for the twenty-first." ―Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly This revolutionary translation is the only way to experience the novel as Hesse envisioned it nearly one hundred years ago. The quest for self-discovery never ends, especially for Harry Haller—better known as the Steppenwolf. After a life spent in self-imposed isolation, Harry meets the mysterious Hermine and becomes captivated by her intoxicating power. Through their nighttime adventures, the Steppenwolf experiences the decadent underbelly of the bourgeois society he always despised. Harry becomes a man divided—lost in a surreal underground world of pleasure and set on a collision course with his innermost desires. There has never been a translation that fully captures the essence of Hermann Hesse’s own spiritual questioning until now. Kurt Beals restores the original meaning of this hallucinatory German tale in a recognizably modern voice. Beals’s expert introduction traces the impact of The Steppenwolf for readers seeking meaning during the upheaval of world conflicts, the onslaught of new technologies, and life’s uncertainties. Paperback256 pagesW.W. Norton & Company, 2025Originally published in 19275.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9781324105992German Literature, Hermann Hesse

The Steppenwolf [paperback]

By Kirsten Menger-Anderson “From Vienna to San Francisco, I was swept away by this fascinating search for family and for answers.”—Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade One of The Washington Post’s “10 Noteworthy Books for March” A thrilling historical mystery about a young woman searching for her father, a young man trying to solve an impossible problem, and the quest for the power to transcend time. In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father’s sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows. He has told her this event might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers? In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the university. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Circle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been targeted by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out. There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it’s a rumor or true. And the only people who know firsthand are not talking. Between the young woman, who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online, and the circle of intellectuals debating space and time in Vienna on the eve of World War II, lie years of history that might easily be erased—unless old secrets are unraveled. Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future. Hardcover256 pagesCrown, 20256.41 x 0.92 x 9.54 inchesISBN 9780593798300 Historical Fiction

The Expert of Subtle Revisions

By Nell Zink “To stay out late in Zink’s world, loitering, is a pleasure. . . . Her voice is cool and fastidious, but she has a screwball quality—a comic sensibility rooted in pain. She grinds her own sophisticated colors as a writer; her ironies are finely tuned; she is uniquely alert to the absurdities of human conduct.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review “This sly, sprightly novel provides a distraction from the news while the news is all over it. . . . One of the pleasures of Sister Europe is that it’s thoroughly up-to-date but still shaped in the timeless way of Wodehousian comedy of errors.”—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal “Picaresque, amusing, and brisk, this is a worldly hangout novel of 21st-century manners.”—Vogue, “The Best Books of 2025—A Preview” An irresistible and poignant novel about the upper echelons of Berlin society, a grand literary celebration, and the after-party that upends the night and carries a group of guests deeper into the city Naema, an elderly princess dedicated to her pet causes, is in a bind: struck by a malady that maroons her in Montreux, she’s unable to host an exclusive gala dinner in Berlin to honor the author Masud al-Huzeil for his lifetime achievement in Arabic literature. Not only is she unable to attend, RSVPs have been slow to materialize, and she’s reduced to begging the ancient award winner to find some attendees at the last minute. Masud invites his old friend Demian, a native Berliner, who in turn invites his two best friends: the troubled innocent Livia and an American publisher, Toto, who will do anything for a free meal. But Toto doesn’t come alone. In tow are his younger Internet date—she’s stood him up often enough to be nicknamed “the Flake”—and Demian’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Nicole. Not to mention the cop who’s been trailing Nicole since she left the red-light district. Presiding over the affair is Naema’s infinitely rich, endlessly disaffected grandson, Prince Radi, whose pass at Nicole culminates in an epic midnight food run that changes all their lives. With sophistication and tenderness, Nell Zink weaves a vividly colored tapestry of a milieu at odds with itself, taking her trademark ambiguity, daring, and humor to new heights. Hardcover208 PagesKnopf, 20256.25 x 9.25 InchesISBN 9780593534915Literature, Fiction

Sister Europe: A Novel

Edited by Charlotte Lee A greatest-hits selection from some of the most popular poets of the Romantic movement, including Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, and Heine, in a gorgeously jacketed small hardcover. Unlike the more earnest English Romantic poets, followers of the Romantic movement in Germany valued wit and humor along with beauty. Admiration for nature is also prominent in their poetry, and in particular the dramatic forests which still cover large areas of Germany. Love and death crop up repeatedly as themes in such famous works as Goethe’s “Elf King” and Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Characters from myth and folklore abound—most famously Lorelei, an enchantress who is associated with the rock of the same name on the bank of the Rhine, who is featured in several poems in this volume. Also gathered here are such favorites as Hölderlin’s “Bread and Wine,” Schiller’s “The Visit of the Gods,” Eichendorff’s “Nocturne,” and Heine’s “The Magic Month of May,” along with works by the most famous women writers of the Romantic era, including Karoline von Günderrode and Sophie Mereau.Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.Hardcover256 pagesEveryman's Library, 20244.125 x 6.25 inchesISBN 9781101908358Poetry, Classics, German Romanticism

German Romantic Poets

By Marissa Moss "A brief comic book style episode introduces each chapter making an effective attention-grabber and a boon to report writers."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "Moss presents a spectacular story of history, science, and women’s struggle for respect through the narrative of Meitner’s life. The writing style is captivating and the book is a quick page-turner."—School Library Journal"Absorbing and well-paced. . .Moss provides readers with comprehensible descriptions of her subject’s scientific work."—The Horn Book MagazineBestselling author-illustrator Marissa Moss tells the gripping story of Lise Meitner, the physicist who discovered nuclear fission.As a female Jewish physicist in Berlin during the early 20th century, Lise Meitner had to fight for an education, a job, and equal treatment in her field, like having her name listed on her own research papers.Meitner made groundbreaking strides in the study of radiation, but when Hitler came to power in Germany, she suddenly had to face not only sexism, but also life-threatening anti-Semitism as well. Nevertheless, she persevered and one day made a discovery that rocked the world: the splitting of the atom. While her male lab partner was awarded a Nobel Prize for the achievement, the committee refused to give her any credit.Suddenly, the race to build the atomic bomb was on—although Meitner was horrified to be associated with such a weapon. “A physicist who never lost her humanity,” Meitner wanted only to figure out how the world works, and advocated for pacifism while others called for war.The book includes an afterword, author's note, timeline, select terms of physics, glossary of scientists mentioned, endnotes, select bibliography, index, and Marissa Moss’s celebrated drawings throughout. The Woman Who Split the Atom is a fascinating look at Meitner’s fierce passion, integrity, and her lifelong struggle to have her contributions to physics recognized.Hardcover264 pagesAge range: 10-14 yearsAbrams Books for Young Readers, 20225.85 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9781419758539Teen Literature, Women Historical Non-Fiction

The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner

By Jac Jemc"Modern and mythic, Empty Theatre captures the outrageous taste of an era while measuring the steep costs of our dream worlds."―Katy Simpson Smith, the New York Times"Surreal, witty, tongue-in-cheek, and distinctly singular, just like the subjects whose life it covers, this is not your mother’s historical fiction. Buckle up for a wild ride, and enjoy every second of it."―David Vogel, BuzzFeed News"...one of the most engrossing and entertaining historical novels in recent memory."―Seth Combs, The San Diego Union TribuneA wildly over-the-top social satire reimagining the mad misadventures of the iconic royal cousins King Ludwig and Empress Sisi, from the incomparable Jac Jemc.History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a stubborn refusal to submit to the roles imposed upon them. Ludwig, simultaneously spoiled and punished for his softness and “unmanly” interests, falls hard for the operas of Richard Wagner and neglects his state duties in the pursuit of art. Sisi, married at the age of sixteen to her beloved Franzl, bristles at the restrictions of her elevated position, the value placed on her beauty, and the simultaneous expectation that she ravage her body again and again in childbirth. Both absurdly vain, both traumatized by the demands of their roles, Sisi and Ludwig struggle against the ideals they are expected to embody, and resist through extravagance, petulance, performance, and frivolity.A tragicomic tour de force, Empty Theatre immerses readers in Ludwig and Sisi’s rarefied, ridiculous, restrictive world—where the aesthetics of excess belie the isolation of its inhabitants. With wit, pathos, and imagination, Jac Jemc takes us on an unforgettable journey through two extraordinary parallel lives and the complex, tenuous friendship that links them.Paperback464 pagesPicador Paper, 20244.9 x 1.2 x 7.9 inchesISBN 9781250872180Austrian Historical Fiction, Literature

Empty Theatre [Paperback]

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Martyn CrucefixRainer Maria Rilke developed one of the most singular poetic styles of the twentieth century. Visionary yet always anchored in the real world, his poems give profound expression to fundamental questions of love and death, of the chaos of the modern world as well as the spiritual consolation of art and nature.Change Your Life draws from across Rilke’s career to offer a comprehensive view of his most essential poetry, featuring major selections from the great Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus alongside less frequently anthologised work. In these dazzling new translations by acclaimed poet Martyn Crucefix, Rilke’s poems beguile with fresh insight and mystery.Paperback256 pagesPushkin Press, 20245.15 x 7.7 x 0.77 inchesISBN 9781782278580Poetry, Austrian Writer

Change Your Life: Essential Poems

By Stefan Zweig “I found it terrible, yet at the same time touching, for in all the years of the war I had not seen so perfect and pure an expression of bliss on any German face.” An ostensibly whimsical story about the adventures of a Berlin art dealer, Stefan Zweig’s The Invisible Collection is a powerful evocation of the condition of Germany between the wars. When Zweig’s anonymous narrator sets off to the provinces in search of a lucrative bargain, he finds himself caught up in the slow unfolding of a family tragedy—and is confronted with a unique reminder of the power of art…Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.Paperback36 pagesEris Gems, 2024Originally published in 19257.68 x 4.33 inchesISBN 9781912475865 Literary Fiction

The Invisible Collection

By Bram Stoker“I felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a consciousness of the awful truth, which chilled me to the heart and sent the blood surging up through my brain.”In this intriguing literary fragment—published seventeen years after Bram Stoker’s most famous novel—an English visitor to southern Germany suffers a terrifying ordeal on Walpurgis Nacht: the night when, according to local tradition, supernatural horrors are set free to walk the earth. But perhaps most chilling of all is the appearance of a mysterious telegram purporting to guarantee the Englishman’s safety, a telegram sent by a certain ‘Dracula’…Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.Paperback32 pagesEris Gems, 2024Originally published in 19147.68 x 4.29 inchesISBN 9781912475797 Gothic Fiction

Dracula's Guest

By Keiron Pim"Utterly engrossing. Endless Flight is a biography of deep humanity, one that captures the individual, the place and the times with acute and affecting brilliance. I loved it." —Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive The mercurial, self-mythologising novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, author of the 20th-century masterpiece The Radetzky March, was the finest observer and chronicler of his age. Endless Flight travels with Roth from his childhood in the town of Brody on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to an unsettled life spent roaming Europe between the wars, including spells in Vienna, Paris and Berlin. His decline mirrored the collapse of civilised Europe: in his last peripatetic decade, he opposed Nazism in exile from Germany, his wife succumbed to schizophrenia and he died an alcoholic on the eve of WWII.Exploring the role of Roth’s absent father in his imaginings, his attitude to his Jewishness and his restless search for home, Keiron Pim’s gripping account of Roth’s chaotic life speaks powerfully to us in our era of uncertainty, refugee crises and rising ethno-nationalism. Published as Roth’s works rapidly gain new readers and recognition, Endless Flight delivers a visceral yet sensitive portrait of his quest for belonging, and a riveting understanding of the brilliance and beauty of his work.Paperback544 pagesGranta Books, 20235.08x 1.18 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781783785117Biography, Exile Literature

Endless Flight: The Genius and Tragedy of Joseph Roth [Paperback]

Von Joseph Roth Lemberg, Moskau, Astrachan — in der Zweit zwischen den Kriegen erkundet Joseph Roth Osteuropa. Mit meisterhaften Reportagen fängt den Alltag der jungen Sowjetunion ein und stößt dabei auf Probleme, die uns heute noch bewegen. Paperback136 pagesText in GermanBeck C.H., 20155.12 x 0.59 x 8.07 inchesISBN 9783406800061Literature, Non-Fiction

Reisen in die Ukraine und nach Russland

By E.T.A. HoffmannTranslated by Peter WortsmanMacabre and fantastical, Hoffmann’s wildly imaginative tales offer an unflinching view of human nature and sing clearer than ever in a masterful new translationWhether a surrealist exploration of the anxieties surrounding automation, or a mystery concerning a goldsmith, missing jewels, and a spate of murders, each tale in this collection reveals the complexities of human desire and fear.Hoffman, whose most famous work is “The Nutcracker,” is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe. Hoffman’s massive influence qualifies him as the godfather of the German Romantic Movement which led to the horror genre.The macabre, fantastical nature of his subject matter inspired a broad swath of culture, with two of the longer stories in this collection “The Sandman” and “The Automaton” influencing Philip K. Dick’s original inspiration for Blade Runner. The murder mystery “Mademoiselle de Scudéry” is perhaps one of the earliest prototypes of the detective genre story.Music and madness flow through E.T.A. Hoffmann’s phantasmagoric stories. The ringing of crystal bells heralds the arrival of a beguiling snake, and a student’s descent into lunacy; a young man abandons his betrothed for a woman who plays the piano skillfully but seems worryingly wooden; a counselor’s daughter must choose between singing and her life.Peter Wortsman’s masterful new translation allows Hoffmann’s distinct and influential style to shine, while breathing new life into stories that seem both familiar and uncanny.Paperback300 pagesArchipelago Books, 20236 x 6.95 inchesISBN 9781953861702Literature, Gothic, Horror

The Golden Pot

By Rainer Maria Rilke Edited by Peter Washington Translated by J.B. Leishman The Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rilke contains poems from The Book of Images; New Poems; Requiem for a Friend; Poems, 1906-1926; French Poems; The Life of Mary; Sonnets to Orpheus; The Duino Elegies; Letters to a Young Poet; and an index of first lines.Hardcover256 pagesEveryman's Library, 19964.1 x 6.25 InchesISBN 9780679450986Poetry, Literature

Rilke: Poems (Everyman's Library)

Edited by Peter WashingtonThese poems, selected from most of the cultures and histories of world literature, provide magnificent witness to the fact that love is as much an act of the imagination as it is of the body. From fourth-century Li Ch’ung’s "Parody of a Lover" to John Betmeman’s "Late-Flowering Lust," they re-create, through the revelations of language, that experience of the erotic. Other poets include Theodore Roethke, Robert Graves, Octavio Paz, Joseph Brodsky, Sylvia Plath, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and many others.Hardcover288 pagesRandom House, 19944.37 x 6.47 inchesISBN 9780679433224 Poetry, Anthology

Erotic Poems: A Seductive Selection

Edited by Diana Secker Tesdell “An excellent new anthology. . . . I’ve long admired Tesdell’s Everyman’s Pocket Classic thematic anthologies for their judicious story selections. Like some of the artists depicted in this one, she creates works that are pleasing, beautiful and surprising.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Stories of Art and Artists gathers two centuries of classic stories from around the world. From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” and Albert Camus’s “The Artist at Work” to Bernard Malamud’s “Rembrandt’s Hat” and Aimee Bender’s “The Color Master,” the tales collected here range from haunting fables about the power of art to vivid portraits of those who create.Writers have long been fascinated by the idea of artistic genius, the relationship between portraits and their subjects, the inspirational role of muses, and the effects on artists of ambition, failure, and success. Art forms featured in these pages include sculpture, pottery, architecture, miniatures, landscapes, portraits, and abstract painting, illumined in brilliant stories by such great writers as Honoré de Balzac, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Marguerite Yourcenar, John Berger, William Boyd, Doris Lessing, Valerie Martin, Julian Barnes, Orhan Pamuk, and A. S. Byatt. Their dazzling literary evocations of the visual arts—using one art form to reflect on another—make Stories of Art and Artists an irresistible gift for lovers of art of all kinds.Hardcover400 pagesEveryman's Library, 20144.25 x 7.25 inchesISBN 9780375712494Short Stories, Fiction

Stories of Art and Artists

By Nishioka KyodaiTranslated by David Yang A sublimely eerie manga adaptation of classic Kafka stories, with a starkly beautiful illustration style – part of Pushkin’s second series of Japanese novellasNine of Franz Kafka’s most memorable tales are here given fresh life with dazzling graphic renderings by the brother-and sister manga creators Nishioka Kyodai. With their distinctive, surreal style of illustration, they have reimagined the fantastic, the imperceptible and the bizarre in Kafka’s work, creating a hauntingly powerful visual world.These stories of enigmatic figures and uncanny transformations are stripped to their core, offering profound new understandings.Includes The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, A Country Doctor and more.Paperback176 pagesPushkin Press, 20235.75 x 0.41 x 8.28 inchesISBN 9781782279846Graphic Novel, Franz Kafka

Kafka: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

By Leonora CarringtonIntroduction by Marina Warner "So vivid is Carrington’s step-by-step descent into madness…it is possible to read Down Below in a single sitting, but emotionally quite difficult… [You] get the distinct impression that for Carrington, reality is malleable." —Carmen Maria Machado, NPR"Her stories are vivid, funny and surprisingly fresh...[they] combine satire with surrealist situations to deftly mock the pomposity of organized religion, sexual repression or the endless forms of bureaucratic hypocrisy and ineptitude... She controls her imagery, amuses us with her tweaking of the bourgeoisie and moves us with her dazzling dreamscapes, all the while firmly maintaining her slightly bemused sang-froid." —Richard Burgin, The New York TimesA stunning work of memoir and an unforgettable depiction of the brilliance and madness by one of Surrealism’s most compelling figuresIn 1937 Leonora Carrington—later to become one of the twentieth century’s great painters of the weird, the alarming, and the wild—was a nineteen-year-old art student in London, beautiful and unapologetically rebellious. At a dinner party, she met the artist Max Ernst. The two fell in love and soon departed to live and paint together in a farmhouse in Provence. In 1940, the invading German army arrested Ernst and sent him to a concentration camp. Carrington suffered a psychotic break. She wept for hours. Her stomach became “the mirror of the earth”—of all worlds in a hostile universe—and she tried to purify the evil by compulsively vomiting. As the Germans neared the south of France, a friend persuaded Carrington to flee to Spain. Facing the approach “of robots, of thoughtless, fleshless beings,” she packed a suitcase that bore on a brass plate the word Revelation.This was only the beginning of a journey into madness that was to end with Carrington confined in a mental institution, overwhelmed not only by her own terrible imaginings but by her doctor’s sadistic course of treatment. In Down Below she describes her ordeal—in which the agonizing and the marvelous were equally combined—with a startling, almost impersonal precision and without a trace of self-pity. Like Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Down Below brings the hallucinatory logic of madness home.Paperback112 PagesNYRB Classics, 20175 x 0.3 x 8 inches ISBN 9781681370606Surrealism, Memoir

Down Below

By Annemarie SchwarzenbachTranslated from the German by Lucy Renner JonesAfterword by Roger Perret Schwarzenbach’s clear, psychologically acute prose makes this novella an evocative narrative, with many intriguing parallels to her own life.Annemarie Schwarzenbach—journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and traveler—has become a European cult figure for bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late 1980s. Lyric Novella is her story of a young man’s obsession with a Berlin variété actress. Despite having his future career mapped out for him in the diplomatic service, the young man begins to question all his family values under Sibylle’s spell. His family, future, and social standing become irrelevant when set against his overriding compulsion to pick her up every night from the theater so they can go for a drive. Bringing the story back to her own life, Schwarzenbach admitted after publication that her hero was in fact a young woman, not a man, leaving little doubt that Lyric Novella is a literary tale of lesbian love during socially and politically turbulent times.Paperback138 pagesSeagull Books, 20225 x 1 x 8 inchesISBN 9781803090375Swiss Writer, Romance

Lyric Novella

By Annemarie SchwarzenbachTranslated from the German by Lucy Renner JonesSince the rediscovery of her work in the late 1980s, Annemarie Schwarzenbach—journalist, traveler, archaeologist, opium addict, and antifascist novelist—has become a European cult figure among free spirited bohemians. Available in English for the first time and beautifully translated by Lucy Renner Jones, Death in Persia is a collage of the political and the private, documenting Schwarzenbach’s intimate feelings and public ideas during four trips to Persia between 1933 and 1939. From her reflections on individual responsibility in the lead-up to World War II to her reactions to accusations from her friends of having deserted Europe and the antifascist cause for Tehran, Schwarzenbach recorded a great deal about daily life in Persia, and, most personally, her ill-fated love affair with Jalé, the daughter of the Turkish ambassador. Chronologically preceding Schwarzenbach’s exquisite travelogue All the Roads are Open, an account of her automobile journey from Geneva to Afghanistan in 1939, Death in Persia is the enthralling diary of an astute observer standing at the crossroads of major events in history and a gorgeous new addition to Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s growing English-language oeuvre.Paperback156 pagesSeagull Books, 20215 x 0.4 x 8 InchesISBN 9780857428233Travel Writing, Swiss Writer

Death in Persia

By Edmund de Waal"[de Waal] demonstrates, in this slim and elegant volume, how words can hold our memories as well as objects while taking up infinitely less space." —Maurice Samuels, The New York Times Book ReviewA tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moïse de Camondo.63 rue de Monceau, ParisDear friend,As you may have guessed by now, I am not in your house by accident. I know your street rather well.Count Moïse de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal’s forebears, the Ephrussi, first encountered in his bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes. Like the Ephrussi, the Camondos were part of belle epoque high society. They were also targets of antisemitism.Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art for his son, Nissim, to inherit. But when Nissim was killed in the First World War, it became a memorial and, upon the Count’s death, was bequeathed to France.The Musée Nissim de Camondo has remained unchanged since 1936. De Waal explores the lavish rooms and detailed archives and uncovers new layers to the family story. In a series of haunting letters addressed to the Count, he tells us what happened next.Paperback 192 pagesPicador, 20225.64 x 0.78 x 8.86 inchesISBN 9781250851062French History, Jewish History

Letters to Camondo

By Sue Hubbard“A triumph of literary and artistic understanding, a tour de force: Masterly, moving and beautifully written.” —Fay WeldonA dazzling novel about groundbreaking artist, Paula Modersohn-Becker—a brilliant early expressionist who toiled under the shadow of her lover Rainer Maria RilkeGirl in White is the extraordinary story of the German expressionist painter Paula Modershohn-Becker (1876-1907), told from the fictionalized perspective of her daughter, Mathilde.Written with the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet this moving story is a meditation on love, loss, memory and, ultimately, hope.Paula Modersohn-Becker was a pioneer of modern art in Europe, but denounced as degenerate by the Nazis after her death. Poet and art critic Sue Hubbard draws on the artist’s diaries and paintings to bring to life her singular existence, her battle to achieve independence and recognition and her intense relationship with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and her struggle to find a balance between being a painter, wife, and mother.Not only do we discover Paula’s vibrant personality and rich legacy of Expressionist paintings, but also come to understand something of the corrupted ideologies of the Third Reich in a book that’s perfect for fans of books like Georgia by Dawn Tripp and The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer.Paperback320 pagesPushkin Press, 20235 x 7.77 inchesISBN 9781782279129Historical Fiction

Girl in White

By Franz KafkaTranslated by Alexander Starritt 'A welcome distillation of Kafka's short fiction, essential indeed.' —Kirkus Reviews'The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man nicely makes a case that readers should not forget Kafka's sly sense of humor and, of course, his humanity, when considering his impact on culture.' —Noah Cruickshank, Forefront, in Shelf Awareness The best stories by the one of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential writersNo one has captured the modern experience, its wild dreams, strange joys, its neuroses and boredom, better than Franz Kafka. His vision, with its absurdity and twisted humour, has lost none of its force or relevance today. This essential collection, translated and selected by Alexander Starritt, casts fresh light on Kafka's genius.Alongside brutal depictions of violence and justice are jokes and deceptively slight, mysterious fables. These unforgettable pieces reflect the brilliance at the core of Franz Kafka, arguably most fully expressed within his short stories. Together they showcase a writer of unmatched imaginative depth, capable of expressing the most profound reality with a wry smile. Paperback192 pagesPushkin Press Classics, 20235 x 0.6 x 7.75 inchesISBN 9781805330400Fiction, Short Stories

The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press Classics)

By Colm TóibínA New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction“Compelling… This is an enormously ambitious book, one in which the intimate and the momentous are exquisitely balanced…Tóibín has fashioned an epic.”—The Guardian“An intimate portrait of Thomas Mann… In The Magician, Tóibín presents a rare view into the making of serious art and, in the process, shows he is a powerful magician himself.” —Chicago Review of Books The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles.Paperback512 pagesScribner, 20226 x 1.4 x 9 inchesISBN 9781476785097Thomas Mann, Historical Fiction

The Magician [Paperback]

This book was featured as part of our Literatur Café series. By Ulrich Baer Honorable Mention in the 2001 Harry Levin Prize, sponsored by the American Comparative Literature Association."This innovative study of the works of Baudelaire and Celan opens a new window on the history of modern identity in western culture."—Germanic Notes and ReviewsIn a bold reassessment, this book analyzes the works of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan, two poets who frame our sense of modern poetry and define the beginning and end of modernity itself.The two poets share a feature that seems to block their placement in such an easy chronological or historical scheme: each accounts for an experience that will not fully enter memory, but dissipates in the mind in the form of trauma, fragments, and shock. While Baudelaire, as Paul Valéry was the first to show, explores the trauma of the minute personal shocks of everyday existence in modern life, Celan engages with the catastrophic magnitude of the Holocaust and how it has altered our understanding of history. Can we relate the shocks registered in Baudelaire's poems to the historical horror addressed in Celan's work without denying either the singularity of suffering and loss or the uniqueness of the historical event of the Shoah?Drawing on trauma studies and Holocaust research, Remnants of Song challenges existing interpretations of Baudelaire and Celan by constantly holding in view both the aesthetic dimension of their works and their historical import. The author demonstrates that the act of engaging with a poem on its own terms may serve as an important model for an ethical response to the radical experiences of trauma. Answering Adorno's famous dictum that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz, he shows that Celan's poetry continues to posit its own truth by drawing on Baudelaire as a precedent—yet it does so in ways that have little to do with conventional understandings of history.Hardcover360 pagesStanford University Press, 20005.5 x 8.5 inches ISBN 9780804738262Literary Criticism

Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan

By Hermann HesseTranslated from the German by Damion Searls“One of humanity’s most beautiful love letters to trees.” ―The Marginalian “Nature frequently brings out our deepest thoughts, but few can express those thoughts better than Hermann Hesse does in this anthology.” —New York Journal of Books An elegant collection of Hermann Hesse’s essays, poems, and passages on the subject of trees and nature, accompanied by thirty-one of his watercolor illustrations. Hermann Hesse understood trees to be symbols of transcendence and rebirth, of instinctive growth present in all natural life. This elegant collection of his essays, poems, and passages on trees, accompanied by thirty-one of his watercolor illustrations, reveals his inspired thoughts on nature, spirituality, and self-knowledge. Together, his writings and paintings mirror the seasons and landscapes as he experienced them, and help remind us that trees’ annual rings are representations of our own days’ struggle, happiness, and purpose.In the author’s words: “They struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws . . . Whoever has learned to listen to trees no longer wants to be one. He wants to be nothing except who he is.”Hardcover 136 pages | 31 full-color watercolors from Hermann HesseKales Press, 20225.3 x 0.7 x 7.4 inchesISBN 9781737832713 Anthology, Nature Writing

Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings

By Hermann HesseTranslated by Elisabeth LaufferIllustrated by Jakob Hübner"A charming book for nature and literature lovers...leaving audiences feeling as lucky to encounter it as Hesse felt about meeting his winged subjects."―Foreword Reviews This volume gathers the most alluring stories, recollections, contemplations and poems on butterflies by Herman Hesse. "I have always had a connection with butterflies and other fleeting and ephemeral beauties, while I have never succeeded in maintaining permanent, committed and so-called solid relationships," writes Hermann Hesse in a letter from 1926. This preference, occasionally resembling an elective affinity, for "flowers and butterflies, that are of everlasting things, a fleeting allegory" – as he says in one of his poems, has left its mark on Hesse’s entire oeuvre.Hardcover136 pages | 110 full-color engraved copper illustrations Kales Press, 20235.3 x 0.7 x 7.3 inchesISBN 9798985955859 Anthology, Nature Writing

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