Because Chekhov’s plays convey the universally recognizable, sometimes comic, sometimes dramatic, frustrations of decent people trying to make sense of their lives, they remain as fresh and vigorous as when they were written a century ago. Gathered here in superb new renderings by one of the most highly regarded translators of our time—versions that have been staged throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain—are Chekhov’s four essential masterpieces for the theater.

The Czech Avant-Garde Literary Movement Between the Two World Wars tells the little-known story of the renaissance of Czech literary arts in the period between the two world wars. The avant-garde writers during this period broke down the barrier between the elite literary language and the vernacular and turned to spoken language, substandard forms, everyday sources such as newspapers and detective stories, and forms of popular entertainment such as the circus and the cabaret. In h...

A perceptive literary critic, a world-famous writer of witty and playful verses for children, a leading authority on children’s linguistic creativity, and a highly skilled translator, Kornei Chukovsky was a complete man of letters. As benefactor to many writers including Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky, he stood for several decades at the center of the Russian literary milieu. It is no exaggeration to claim that Chukovsky knew everyone involved in shaping the course of twentiet...

The Book of Blam, Aleksandar Tišma’s “extended kaddish . . . [his] masterpiece” (Kirkus Reviews), is a modern-day retelling of the book of Job. The war is over. Miroslav Blam walks along the former Jew Street, and he remembers. He remembers Aaron Grün, the hunchbacked watchmaker; and Eduard Fiker, a lamp merchant; and Jakob Mentele, a stove fitter; and Arthur Spitzer, a grocer, who played amateur soccer and had non-Jewish friends; and Sándor Vértes, a lawyer who was a Communist. A...

This classic of world literature, War and Peace has been hailed as one of the greatest novels ever written.Tolstoy's epic tale entwines grand themes, ranging from moving depictions of historical events to intimate scenes of family life, as his portrait of both public spectacles and private lives offer a tale of both panoramic scope and closely observed detail.The story unfolds in St. Petersburg in 1805 as citizens grow concerned about the prospect ...

From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories.Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales--eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time--display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination. They range from sprightly fables to bittersweet tales of loss, from claustrophobic exercises i...

**Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker, TIME, Vanity Fair, and Kirkus Reviews • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025"Smart, somber . . . There’s pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity."- The New York Times Book ReviewA profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays**In this eagerly awaited n...

**Named a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2025Named a Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025Named a Best Book of the Year by Vulture, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair"I loved RUTH."—Lorde“It would never work out, but I’m in love with Ruth.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post“A wonderful, loving, tenderly teasing and often moving portrait … [a] standout.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From internationally renowned, award-winning author Salman Rushdie, a spellbinding exploration of life, death, and what comes into focus at the proverbial eleventh hour of life“An inventive and engrossing collection of stories which, though death-tinged, are never doom-laden. With luck this master writer has more tales to tell.”—Los Angeles TimesA NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “masterly” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice), “riveting” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return“A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.”—

In The Man Who Tasted Words, Guy Leschziner leads readers through the senses and how, through them, our brain understands or misunderstands the world around us.Vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch are what we rely on to perceive the reality of our world. Our senses are the conduits that bring us the scent of a freshly brewed cup of coffee or the notes of a favorite song suddenly playing on the radio. But are they really that reliable? The Man Who Ta...

Available in English for the very first time, a powerful, poignant novel about three half sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country.With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third ...