“These thirty-three prose inventions of Christopher Middleton constitute the fourth pillar of an extraordinary literary oeuvre, the other three being his poetry, translations, and literary essays. Whatever one chooses to call these often astonishing miniatures, they are certainly Middleton’s wildest, most accessible and entertaining work, and they count as some of his very finest writing.”— August Kleinzahler, ForewordThese uncategorizable writings by a distinguished poet and trans...

This selection of Middleton's letters offers a new beginning point for readers of this dazzling, many-talented writer. The first letter here dates from 1936, the last from 2015, and this selection charts a life lived to the full as the poet reports on his work, his writing life and his continuous transatlantic engagement with the poets and critics of his generation.Enthusiastic, discursive and slyly humorous, Christopher Middleton (1926–2015) was an electrifying correspondent. This...

The Eyemouth Fishing Disaster saw almost two hundred men lose their lives when their small, wooden fishing boats were caught in near-hurricane force winds off the coast of Scotland in 1881. The Japanese fishing training vessel the Ehime Maru was quietly making its way across the Pacific Ocean when it was struck from beneath by a US Navy nuclear submarine and sank within minutes. The British trawler Gaul, newly constructed and specifically designed to handle harsh conditions and stormy seas...

August Kleinzahler says, Christopher Middleton is, and remains, a shocking man. 'One hardly knows where to begin...' There are few risks Middleton will not take in his poems. For six decades and more he has uncovered new dimensions in language. The last decade has been one of continuous discovery and extension. His English is an open medium, responding to Arabic, German, Spanish, French and other media. And English is eloquent in its nonsense as much as in its sense. His poems do not linge...

The Swiss writer Robert Walser is one of the quiet geniuses of twentieth-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short stories, essays, as well as four novels, of which Jakob von Gunten is widely recognized as the finest. The book is a young man's inquisitive and irreverent account of life in what turns out to be the most uncanny of schools. It is the work of an outsider artist, a writer of uncompromising origi...

The Swiss writer of whom Hermann Hesse famously declared, “If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place,” Robert Walser (1878–1956) is only now finding an audience among English-speaking readers commensurate with his merits—if not with his self-image. After a wandering, precarious life during which he produced poems, essays, stories, and novels, Walser entered an insane asylum, saying, “I am not here to write, but to be mad.” Many of the unpublished works he left...

Experience the mind-bending genius of Robert Walser, a master of modern literature, in this captivating collection of short stories.In her preface to Selected Stories, Susan Sontag describes Walser as "a good-humored, sweet Beckett," while others compare him to "a comic Kafka." These formulations perfectly capture the unique reading experience of Walser's works: a delightful blend of wit, charm, and unsettling brilliance.Revered by literary giants ...

Authoritative English translations of Goethe’s major poetic worksGoethe created a body of poetry that is unsurpassed in lucidity of speech and imagery and in instinct for melody and rhythm. The founder of the poetry of experience, he reintroduced intimacy to the public world, and his poems have something for everyone. Nonetheless, Goethe the poet remains relatively unknown to contemporary English-speaking audiences, partly because of the difficulties his poetry has...

In English for the first time: The pioneering Dadaist’s insights and remembrances of a lifetime working side-by-side with the leading modern artists of the twentieth century.Painter, filmmaker, writer, and teacher Hans Richter (1888–1976) was at the center of some of the most important movements in modernism, including Expressionism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and Surrealism. In contrast to the image of the lone artist creating in isolation, Richter’s long and prolific career was fue...

What if the healthcare system was never truly built to make you healthy?In The System Doesn’t Sell Health, physician-scientist and healthcare strategist Christopher Voss pulls back the curtain on the hidden design of modern medicine—and reveals why America keeps paying more, getting less, and growing sicker in the process.This is not just a book about policy. It is a wake-up call.With the clarity of a frontline physician and the insight of a systems thinker, Voss sh...

A Schoolboy’s Diary brings together more than seventy of Robert Walser’s strange and wonderful stories, most never before available in English. Opening with a sequence from Walser’s first book, “Fritz Kocher’s Essays,” the complete classroom assignments of a fictional boy who has met a tragically early death, this selection ranges from sketches of uncomprehending editors, overly passionate readers, and dreamy artists to tales of devilish adultery, sexual encounters on a train, and...

Ranging from one-page fantasies to novella-length studies of everyday existence, The Walk reveals the irresistible genius of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Under-appreciated even in his own lifetime, Robert Walser has nonetheless been recognised by such writers as W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Franz Kafka, Herman Hesse and J.M. Coetzee.Like Kafka and Sebald, Walser wrote about the solitude and unease of human existence. Honest, wry and idiosyncratic, his sto...