A tender story about three sisters coming of age in Greece over the course of three summers, now available after being out of print for over twenty years.“… That summer we bought big st
The first English-language collection of a contemporary Russian master of the short story.Maxim Osipov, who lives and practices medicine in a town ninety miles outside Moscow, is one of Russia's best-
A New York Review Books Original“Tolstaya carves indelible people who roam the imagination long after the book is put down.” –TimeTatyana Tolstaya’s short stories—with their unpredictable fairy-tale p
England in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even s
Patrick Hamilton may be best known now for the plays Rope and Gaslight and for the classic Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor movies they inspired, but in his heyday he was no less famous for his brood
The distinguished Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy was sitting in a Budapest cafe, wondering whether to write a long-planned monograph on modern man or a new play, when he was disturbed by the roarin
Vladimir Sorokin’s first published novel, The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet “years of stagnation.” Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors ar
The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their inhabitants’ traditional way of life have
Seemingly the simplest of stories—a passing anecdote of village life— Rock Crystal opens up into a tale of almost unendurable suspense. This jewel-like novella by the writer that Thomas Mann praised a
Ringolevio is a classic American story of self-invention by one of the more mysterious and alluring figures to emerge in the 1960s. Emmett Grogan grew up on New York City’s mean streets, getting hooke
In 1914, Henry James began work on a major novel about the immense new fortunes of America's Gilded Age. After an absence of more than twenty years, James had returned for a visit to his native count
On March 16, 1978 Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minister of Italy, was ambushed in Rome. Within three minutes the gang killed his escort and bundled Moro into one of three getaway cars. An hour later the
Richard Cobb (1917-1996) was born in Tunbridge Wells, the son of a minor civil servant, and educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford. A year spent in France between public school and college turned him into
Yuri Olesha's novella Envy brings together cutting social satire, slapstick humor, and a wild visionary streak. Andrei is a model Soviet citizen, a swaggeringly self-satisfied mogul of the food indus
Singapore, 1939: Life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. Business may be booming - what with the
Gerald Middleton is a sixty-year-old self-proclaimed failure. Worse than that, he's a "failure with a conscience." As a young man, he was involved in an archaeological dig that turned up an obscene i
Starting in 1970, Jean Genet - petty thief, prostitute, modernist master - spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced peo
Seated in a Paris cafe, a man glimpses another man, a shadowy figure hurrying for the train: Who is he? he wonders, How does he live? And instantly the shadow comes to life, precipitating a series of
Jerusalem in 1945 is a city in flux: refugees from the war in Europe fill its streets and cafes, the British colonial mandate is coming to an end, and tensions are on the rise between the Arab and Jew
Provocative, romantic, and restlessly exploratory, Peter Handke is one of the great writers of our time. Slow Homecoming, originally published in the late 1970s, is central to his achievement and to t
