Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Zündel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent . . . At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. First his tooth falls out in the sight of other travelers, then he finds a severed finger in a restroom on a train. In fact, Zündel seems on the verge of falling t...

A bracing and darkly comic novel about a disgraced priest who finds himself haunted by his dead and disapproving father, this little-known classic of Swiss literature is impossible to forget.In a small town in Switzerland, Franz—ex-clergyman, ex-husband, current counselor of locals at loose ends—is being haunted by his recently deceased father, Klement. In life, Franz was caught cheating on his wife and defrocked, after which Klement never spoke to him again. In de...

The final work of Nobel Prize-winning writer Günter Grass – a witty and elegiac series of meditations on writing, growing old, and the world.Suddenly, in spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, everything seems possible again: love letters, soliloquies, scenes of jealousy, swan songs, social satire, and moments of happiness.Only an ageing artist who had once more cheated death could get to work with such wisdom, defiance and wit. A wealth...

'He was blamed for endless disasters, from failed exams to a bridge collapse, an avalanche, even a shipwreck: all due, in the stupid opinion of, first, his fellow-students and, later, his colleagues, to the penetrating power of his evil eye...'Profound and compassionate, Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing literary voices to emerge from the twentieth century. Whether describing the most beautiful poem ever composed or an invention gone horribly wrong, these ...

'Reading Brodsky's essays is like a conversation with an immensely erudite, hugely entertaining and witty (and often very funny) interlocutor' Wall Street JournalWatermark is Joseph Brodsky's witty, intelligent, moving and elegant portrait of Venice. Looking at every aspect of the city, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures its magnificence and beauty, and recalls his own memories of the place he called hom...

**An NPR Best Book of the YearVulture • “15 Must-Read Translated Books From the Past 5 Years”Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut.**In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the e...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET ATWOOD'[A] searing masterwork of Northern European literature. The retrieval of Doctor Glas in English is a bracing gift to hungry readers' Susan SontagLonely and introspective, Doctor Glas has long felt an instinctive hostility toward the odious local minister. So when the minister’s beautiful wife complains of her husband’s oppressive sexual attentions, Doctor Glas finds himself contemplating murd...

A new selection of poetry from the generation-defining author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated for the first time into EnglishWhile Tove Ditlevsen is now famous around the world as an extraordinary prose writer, in Denmark she has also long been celebrated as a poet. She published her first collection in her early twenties, and continued writing and publishing poetry until the end of her life. This new selection offers English readers a chance to expl...

Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us into a war between kitchen and bedroom. He, an unemployed humanist, is trying to change the world and write a novel. She, a passable actress, has given up her safe job at the theatre to care for their child. He is delirious, she is on edge. With the rent overdue and violence looming on all sides, the two of them circle one another in a dizzying dance towards the abyss.

Writing, one of Marguerite Duras’s last works, is a meditation on the process of writing and on her need for solitude in order to do it. In the five short pieces collected in this volume, she explores experiences that had an emotional impact on her and that inspired her to write. These vary from the death of a pilot in World War II, to the death of a fly, to an art exhibition. Two of the pieces were made into documentary films, and one was originally a short film. Both autobiograp...

Moscow Stations, Venedikt Yerofeev's autobiographical novel, is in many ways the successor to Gogol's Dead Souls. The two works are comic historical bookends, with Gogol's novel portraying the sloth and corruption of feudal Russia and Yerofeev's novel portraying the sloth and corruption of feudal Communism. The truth is that while the streets of Moscow may be clogged with Volvos and Mercedes sedans these days - in keeping with the new capitalism - the angu...

WINNER OF THE 2014 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARDWINNER OF THE 2016 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICEWINNER OF THE 2016 WESTERN AUSTRALIA PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICEFor nearly five years I have wanted to write something about the surrealist painter Emil Bafdescu: about his paintings, one of which hangs in a little restaurant in Melbourne, and about his disappeara...