Last Last Orders is the third part of Arno Camenicsh's award-winning trilogy set in the Swiss Alps. It is the final evening in the Helvetia bar, and the regulars sit around one last time to drink and
Atavisms is an original and unsettling portrait of Quebec, from the hinterland to the metropolis, from colonial times to the present, and beyond. These thirteen stories, though not linked in the tradi
This novella recounts the imagination of a lonely old man who becomes obsessed by a beautiful young girl in his village. His every moment is filled with thoughts and fantasies about her. Eventually li
The writer-narrator of The Bulgarian Truck has hit upon a new technique for constructing a novel, which he calls 'a building site beneath the open sky', but he can't seem to persuade his more widely r
After nearly a lifetime of reading Rilke in English translation, William H. Gass undertook the task of translating Rilke's writing himself, in order to see if he could, in that way, get closer to the
Written when John Barth was 24 years old, The Floating Opera is his first novel, published in 1957. It is a first-person reminiscence of the day Todd Andrews decided to commit suicide. Having picked u
Childhood play, scarlet fever, a first kiss, befriending a Nazi spy--the narrative ofPast Habitual roams through experiences both commonplace and formative, all under the uneasy canopy of wartime Irel
Nicholas Mosley brings the unblinking probing of a scientist to bear on the workings of the writer's imagination. The result is a constantly stimulating, frequently startling, and always cheerfully un
At a time when the dialogue between America and France is strained by political and cultural forces, As You Were Saying provides a space for an important and riveting exchange between writers from the
Editor's note/An interview with Gerald Murnane by Antoni Jach/Looking for Writers Beyond Their Work by John Griswold/Five Silhouettes by Luis Chitarroni (translated by Sarah Denaci)/Seven and a Half S
The hiring of a new secretary shouldn't be a big deal--just a slight a change in the office environment. But for the protagonist of this novel, it is a declaration of war, a call to arms: "The new sec
The novel begins with an account of the family of the major character, known as the "Prince of Journalists." This bizarre family -- the grandparents a soldier and a sodomized woman, the parents an orp
Jarleth Prendergast is an ex-pat Irishman, an aging punk rocker, a film snob, a copy-shop employee, a dime-store intellectual, and a truly desperate man. His marriage is in pieces and his career as an
Writing against the grain of conventional Irish fiction, Dorothy Nelson explores a demented, dysfunctional Irish family dominated by Da, a manic-depressive thief and liar who has spent two years in pr
In everyday tones, a story is told by the perpetrator of triple incest: first with his mother as a child and young man, then with his daughter as he grows into mature manhood, and finally with his sis
In a celebration of life and joy, a professor recalls the thirty-nine years of her life as she lies dying, revealing emotional and intellectual richness and variety, including the horrors of her famil
Composed of a series of letters between a husband and wife, The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium is a brilliant comedy about love and longing, dashed hopes and frustrations, and trying to make connectio
As one of the characters in Assassins says, "Tolstoy was right, you can't beat the Gods. It's the small things - the warp and woof - that make up the pattern. And how much influence do we hav
This vivid and strikingly witty novel examines the contradictions between the public face and the private experience. Nephew to the prime minister of England, eighteen-year-old Bert tries to make sens
