In this, his third adaptation of a Chekhov play, Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Mamet offers a contemporary, highly accessible version of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. Working from a literal trans
Long acknowledged as one of the most important literary figures in France, Marguerite Duras has garnered worldwide praise for her work, from the acclaimed screenplay Hiroshima Mon Amour to the best-s
This volume contains Philosophy in the Bedroom, a major novel that presents the clearest summation of his political philosophy; Eugénie de Franval, a novella widely considered to be a masterpiece of e
John Kennedy Toole, who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces, wrote The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of sixteen. The manuscri
These are the major speeches made by Malcolm X during the last tumultuous eight months of his life. In this short period of time, his vision for abolishing racial inequality in the United States unde
Jack Kerouac, who died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven, is renowned as the father of the "beat generation." His eighteen internationally acclaimed books -- including "On the Road, Doctor Sax, The S
Using postmodern form, Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations moves her narrator through time, gender, and identity as it examines our era’s cherished beliefs about life and art.
D.W. Winnicott, a psychoanalyst of extraordinary grace and originality, left a body of work distinguished by fierce independence of mind, profound playfulness and technique, and passionate intelligenc
Regarded by many critics as Jean Genet’s highest achievement in the novel –– certainly one of the landmarks of postwar French literature. The story of a dangerous man seduced by per
“Laughing wild amid severest woe” perfectly describes the fiercely ironic comedy of Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild (which takes its title from this Thomas Gray quotation via Sam
In his most challenging work to date, Czech playwright Vaclav Havel has given the Faust legend a provocative twist. His setting is 'the Institute, ' whose mission is to combat the 'irrational tendenci
A scathing comedy of social striving in the suburbs, Absurd Person Singular follows the fortunes of three couples who turn up in each other's kitchens on three successive Christmases, to hilarious an
Tobias Schneebaum here tells the remarkable story of his four years among the Asmat of New Guinea, a jungle-dwelling people rumored to have killed Michael Rockefeller. Instead of ferocious cannibals,
This brilliant comic trilogy details the amorous exploits of Norman, assistant librarian, whose one aim is to make the women of his life happy—these women being, as it happens, three sisters, o
Alfred Jarry is regarded as one of the founders of modern avant-garde theatre— “Dada, Surrealism, Pataphysics, Theatre of Cruelty, the Absurd—all owe a debt to Jarry.” (Encore
Winner of the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award for 1987, Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants has been acclaimed as a masterpiece wherever it has been shown. One of the great filmmakers of our
When Marie decides to leave Bruce, she delivers herself of a torrent of ferocious humor and foul-mouthed vituperation concerning him and their marriage, not to mention love, hate, caring, commitment,
In this haunting novel of intensely felt adolescence, Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up, as Kerouac himself did, in the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massac
The Marquis de Sade, vilified by respectable society from his own time through ours, apotheosized by Apollinaire as "the freest spirit that has yet existed," wrote The 120 Days of Sodom while impriso
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel, personifying his quest for spiritual glory through the pursuit of evil. Writing in the intensely lyrical prose s
House of Games is a psychological thriller in which a young woman psychiatrist falls prey to an elaborate and ingenious con game by one of her patients who entraps her in a series of criminal escapad
This pathbreaking compilation, long out of print, is a survey of sexual fantasies from early folklore to the bawdy tales of the prolific Victorians to a very modern version of “Little Red Ridin
Explicitly political, The Screens is set within the context of the Algerian War. The play’s cast of over fifty characters moves through seventeen scenes, the world of the living breaching the w
This is the central volume in Horton Foote’s remarkable nine-play Orphans’ Home Cycle, in which the author chronicles the evolution of a family—the strengths that bind its members t
Professor Leopold Nettles, the “hero” of Largo Desolato, is the author of a book that contains a troublesome paragraph laying him open to arrest on charges of “disturbing the intellectual peace.” Pres
Nexus, the last book of Henry Miller's epic trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, is widely considered to be one of the landmarks of American fiction. In it, Miller vividly recalls his many years as a down-a
In 1941, Henry Miller, the author of Tropic of Cancer, was commissioned by a Los Angeles bookseller to write an erotic novel for a dollar a page. Under the Roofs of Paris (originally published as Opu
Aunt Dan & Lemon takes us into the world of a young recluse named Lemon (alias Leonora) who spends her nights reading chronicles of Nazi atrocities. Lemon tells the audience about the overwhelmin
Renowned Beckett scholar Ruby Cohn has selected some of Beckett's criticisms, reviews, letters, and other unpublished materials that shed new light on his work.
Among Howard Fast's historical fiction, Citizen Tom Paine-one of America's all-time best-sellers-occupies a special place, for it restored to a generation of readers the vision of Paine's revolutiona
Oe’s most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times “close to a perfect novel.” In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though unive
"The Elephant Man" is based on the life of John Merrick, who lived in London during the latter part of the nineteenth century. A horribly deformed young man, who has been a freak attraction in traveli
This volume contains everything Behan wrote in dramatic form in English. First come the three famous full-length plays: The Quare Fellow, set in an Irish prison, is "something very like a masterpiece
This collection gathers together the Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett's English poems (including Whoroscope, his first published verse), English translations of poems by Eluard, Rimbaud, Apo
Exit the King is a highly stylized, ritualized death rite unfolding the final hours of the once-great king Berenger the First. As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young em
'First Love', a man's musings about his youth occasioned by his visit to his father's grave, was first written by Samuel Beckett in French in 1945, but it wasn't until 1973 that he completed this the
“An amazing sequence of imaginatively bizarre sexual adventures punctuated by philosophical and theological digression. Mlle. De Maupin, Lolita, Candy—all pale beside Juliette.”—Library Journal
After almost a half a century of scrupulous devotion to his art, Jorge Luis Borges personally compiled this anthology of his work—short stories, essays, poems, and brief mordant “sketches
The three plays gathered in this volume are among Bertolt Brecht's most remarkable; the best-known is Jungle of Cities, here translated by the poet Anselm Hollo. Set in Chicago in a climate of rampan
“It is one thing to be informed by Shakespeare that life “is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing”; it is something else to encounter the idea literally presented in a novel b
