The NPR reporter offers an "engaging and enlightening" window into late-90s Cuba, "from the cafes in Havana to the mysterious lairs of Santiago de Cuba" ( Kirkus Reviews).For NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, reporting from Cuba on the eve of Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit was an opportunity to understand the realities of life in a country that has long been the subject of stereotypes and misconceptions. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba was t...

A "brilliant" novel of Elizabeth Bathory, the notorious sixteenth-century Hungarian aristocrat who bathed in the blood of virgins ( St. Petersburg Times).Turmoil reigns in post-Soviet Hungary when journalist Drake Bathory-Kereshtur returns from America to grapple with his family history. He's haunted by the legacy of his ancestor, the notorious sixteenth-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is said to have murdered more than 650 young virgins and bathed...

At the end of the millennium, as Armageddon looms, two young women from opposite sides of the world unite as humanity's last hope for salvationIn New Orleans, private investigator Felicity LeJeune has made it her mission to bring down the corrupt televangelist Reverend Mullin, leader of the United Ministries, who filched two million dollars in lottery winnings from Felicity's unassuming grandmother. Meanwhile, Mullin's flock of religious fundamentalists bombards the...

An erotic, comedic, and compulsively readable historical novel depicting the beguiling Giacomo Casanova as he looks back on a life of love and ribald adventureIn Count Waldstein's far-flung Bohemian castle, an aging Casanova spends his days as a librarian cataloging the count's extensive collection of books. Or at least that's what he's supposed to be doing. Ever the storyteller, Casanova instead dedicates himself to his own writing, for which the young servant Laur...

A modern-day Faust embarks on a wild romp through the peculiar and preposterous American landscapeWhen the Devil shows up in Wakefield's living room to announce that his time is up, the bookish "de-motivational" speaker tries to strike a deal. The Devil agrees to prolong Wakefield's life—for now—on the condition that within the next year he finds a more authentic existence. For Wakefield, who is estranged from his family, nearly friendless, and excellent at his job ...

This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life." —The Posthuman Dada GuideThe Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world—all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse—a battle between radical visions of art...

The Devil is alive and well and living in America, Andrei Codrescu tells us, and with good reason. Nowhere else in the world--not even in Codrescu's native Transylvania--is he taken quite as seriously. When Codrescu gently derided the fundamentalist Christian belief in Rapture ("a pre-apocalyptic event during which all true believers would be suctioned off to heaven in a single woosh") in one of his commentaries on National Public, NPR received forty thousand letters in a protest spearhead...

A rollicking story of the strangest creative writing class ever—as only Andrei Codrescu could tell it"Intro to Poetry Writing is always like this: a long labor, a breech birth, or, obversely, mining in the dark. You take healthy young Americans used to sunshine (aided sometimes by Xanax and Adderall), you blindfold them and lead them by the hand into a labyrinth made from bones. Then you tell them their assignment: 'Find the Grail. You have a New York minute to get...

The devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has been imprinted in our collective visual memory by thousands of images in the media and books of dramatic photographs by Robert Polidori, Larry Towell, Chris Jordan, Debbie Fleming Caffrey, and others. New Orleanians want the world to see and respond to the destruction of their city and the suffering of its people—and yet so many images of so much destruction threaten a visual and emotional overload that would tempt us to avert our ...

"Everything I have to say about race and religion and politics is in the novels," declares Barry Gifford. The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room gathers generous portions of all thirteen novels and novellas, as well as first-person essays, generous helpings of poetry, journalism, and a new interview with the author. The broad contours of an episodic output emerge—a full-length view of the freaks and freakish incidents that populate Gifford’s unique human comedy. A world, as Lula, the auth...

An irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights"I fear each passing night that I will not receive my maintenance dose of suspense, and then I will cease to exist."—Whatever Gets You through the NightWhatever Gets You through the Night is an irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights and a wildly inspired exploration of the timeless art of storytelling. Award-winning writer Andrei Codrescu reimagines...

A collection of twenty-eight brilliant and strange stories, inspired by Japanese folk tales and written by renowned Western expatriate Lafcadio HearnLafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) was one of the nineteenth century’s best-known writers, his name celebrated alongside those of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. Born in Greece and raised in Ireland, Hearn was a true prodigy and world traveler. He worked as a reporter in Cincinnati, New Orleans, and the West Indies befo...