A new translation of the only novel by lauded Romanian literary critic Matei CălinescuAn NYRB Classics OriginalUgly, unkempt, a haunter of low dives who begs for a living and lives on the street, Zacharias Lichter exists for all that in a state of unlikely rapture. After being engulfed by a divine flame as a teenager, Zacharias has devoted his days to doing nothing at all—apart, that is, from composing the odd poem he immediately throws away and consorting ...

The Tin Drum, one of the great novels of the twentieth century, became a runaway bestseller and catapulted its young author to the forefront of world literature. Now on the book’s fiftieth anniversary comes this new translation by Breon Mitchell, one that is faithful to Grass’ style and rhythm, restores omissions, and reflects more fully the complexity of the original work.This is the story of Oskar Matzerath, a dwarfish hunchback detained in a mental hospital, convicted o...

Josef K. is an employee at a bank, an Everyman without any particular qualities or ambitions. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his “arrest” by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a “crime” he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a “court” with which he cannot communicate. The defendant can only ask questions, but receives no answers to clarify the surreal world in which he is compelled to wande...

Brought to you by Penguin.A collection of Kafka's greatest short fiction, translated by Michael HofmannKafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, Metamorphosis, the story of an ordinary man transformed into an insect, is brought together in this collection with the rest of his works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Contemplation, a collection of his earlier short studies; The Judgement, writ...

The first in a “fresh” (Jason M. Hough, New York Times bestselling author) sci-fi space opera that follows a powerful planetary assassin who can destroy planets with a single word but is suddenly faced with an adversary that threatens the entire known universe.Far in the future, human beings have seeded themselves amongst the stars. Since decoding the language of the universe 8,000 years ago, they have reached the very edges of their known galaxy and built...

'Karl continued to push through, but he no longer had any real hope of achieving anything.'Unexpected adventures and whirlwind encounters await Karl Rossman when he arrives in New York from Europe. Cast out by his family and determined to make a better life, he soon finds himself making friends as well as enemies in a bizarre and chaotic new world brimming with unknown places, eccentric characters, and ulterior motives.First published in 1927 and newly tran...

An award-winning novel about the value of friendships in present-day Singapore—a **“**stirring debut…relatable yet unsettling [that] smartly captures earnest teenage myopathy through a tumultuous high school relationship” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).“I am Miss Frankenstein, I am the bottom of the bell curve.” So declares Szu, a teenager living in a dark, dank house on a Singapore cul-de-sac, at the beginning of this richly...

'Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?'The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer.As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all ti...

The need for love—obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable—takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates.In the suspenseful "Strip Poker," a reckless adolescent girl must find a way of turning the tables on a gathering of increasingly threatening young men—can she "outplay" them?In "Smother!" a young woman's nightmare memory of childhood brings trouble on her professor...

Tracing a group of ruthless outlaws from its genesis during the American Civil War all the way to a final bloody stand in the Oklahoma territories, The Winter Family is a hyperkinetic Western noir that reads like a full-on assault to the senses.Spanning the better part of three decades, The Winter Family traverses America's harsh, untamed terrain, both serving and opposing the fierce advance of civilization. Among its twisted specimens, the Winter...

Shortlisted for the Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction PrizeOne of The Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Best Books of 2014There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant's second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whomthey would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs. Young, for...

This expansive book chronicles the true story of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the perilous heart of the Sahara.The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub—and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled sailors for centuries....