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 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...

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 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...

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadOften called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle—all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of ...

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...

From the author of the classic Mythology , "a book of both cultural and critical importance" reveals ancient Greece through literature, philosophy, and art ( The New York Times )."Five hundred years before Christ. . . . Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius. *. . . What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and v...

**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 and Washington Post Top 10 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“There are inklings of greatness ...

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.”—

A “compelling and impressive” (Sunday Times) reassessment of the Iliad, uncovering how the poem was written and why it remains enduringly powerfulThe Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure?Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, ...

Finalist, ABA Silver Gavel Award for BooksThe New York Times bestseller that has cemented Elie Mystal's reputation as one of our sharpest and most acerbic legal minds"After reading Allow Me to Retort, I want Elie Mystal to explain everything I don't understand—quantum astrophysics, the infield fly rule, why people think Bob Dylan is a good singer . . ." —Michael Harriot, The RootAllow ...