Set among the glittering clubs and grimy side streets of 1920s Berlin (with detours to Italy and Paris), these charming, witty, and erotic tales capture the trials and triumphs of early twentieth-century gay life without apology or shame. Granand, the pen name for theater director and author Erich Ritter von Busse, lost his battle against bigoted censors but won a shining place in literary history with this pathbreaking volume. Instead of hewing to the villain/victim dichotomy that haunts ...

**A BEST BOOK OF 2021 FOR THE GUARDIAN * FINANCIAL TIMES * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT * MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE * THE TIMESHailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany**Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected...

A long-lost painting stolen by the Nazis turns up at a Boston pawnshop—and leads to a string of murders—in this "fast-paced and tightly written thriller" ( The Seattle Times).In April 1945, the Nazis, reeling and near defeat, frantically work to hide the huge store of art treasures that Hitler has looted from Europe. Truck convoys loaded with the cultural wealth of the Western world pour in an unending stream into the compound of the vast Altaussee salt mi...

Based on a true story, a gripping historical novel about a German immigrant who becomes embroiled in a Nazi spy ring operating in New York City in the early days of World War II.At the end of the 1930s, Europe is engulfed in war. Though America is far from the fighting, the streets of New York have become a battlefield. Anti-Semitic and racist groups spread hate, while German nationalists celebrate Hitler’s strength and power. Josef Klein, a German immigrant, remai...

A black musician arrested by Nazis in 1930s Germany endures the horrors of the Dachau death camp in this harrowing novel based on historical factA self-proclaimed "gay negro" from New Orleans, Clifford Pepperidge made his name in the smoky nightclubs of Harlem in the 1920s, playing piano alongside Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. A decade later, he thrills crowds nightly in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. But dark days are on the horizon as the Na...

Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for the best translated novel of 2014, now a New Directions paperbackWinner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Hans Fallada Prize, The End of Days, by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five “books,” each leading to a different death of the same unnamed female protagonist. How could it all have gone differently?—the narrator asks in the intermezzos. The first ch...

A classic of 20th-century fiction, The Berlin Stories inspired the Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film Cabaret.First published in the 1930s, The Berlin Stories contains two astonishing related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its...

Berlin Alexanderplatz is a profound exploration of human struggle, moral ambiguity, and the societal pressures shaping individual lives. Alfred Döblin vividly portrays the challenges faced by Franz Biberkopf, a man recently released from prison, as he navigates the complexities of life in the chaotic urban landscape of Weimar-era Berlin. The novel delves into themes of redemption, the fragility of human will, and the often-overwhelming influence o...

BONUS: This edition contains excerpts from Arthur Phillips's The Tragedy of Arthur, The Song Is You, The Egyptologist, and Angelica.A first novel of startling scope and ambition, Prague depicts an intentionally lost Lost Generation as it follows five American expats who come to Budapest in the early 1990s to seek their fortune—financial, romantic, and spiritual—in an exotic city newly opened to the West. They harbor the vague suspicion that their ...

Named Book of the Year by Elle magazine, this "Italian love story [is] destined to become a classic" ( The Gazette).Eva, a forty-year-old public relations professional living in Northern Italy, receives an unexpected message from Southern Italy. Vito, a man she briefly knew as a child as a friend of her mother's, is very ill and would like to see her one last time. He is a retired police officer who was stationed in the north during the late sixtie...

Now in paperback, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos is a dramatic love story that unfolds as the GDR implodes—*“an intimate account of obsessive, transgressive passion” (Claire Messud, Harper’s)*WINNER OF THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURELONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD IN PROSEAn epic storytel...

When Helga Schneider was four, her mother, Traudi, abandoned her to pursue her career. In 1998, Helga received a letter asking her to visit Traudi, now 90-years old, before she dies. Mother and daughter have met only once after Traudi left, on a disastrous visit where Helga first learnt the terrible secret of her mother's past.Traudi was as an extermination guard in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck and was involved in Nazi 'medical' experiments on prisoners. She has never expressed even t...