Andreas Ban, a psychologist who does not psychologize anymore and a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town in Croatia. He sifts through the remnants of his life—his research, books
The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography” or “diary” containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and rumi
What does northness sound like? The music of Iceland, Greenland, the Svalbard archipelago. Songs of birds and ice and wind. In Lesley Harrison’s Blue Pearl, her first collection to appear in the Unite
New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggy’s strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist ofhyper-brevity in fiction, Fleu
Fleur Jaeggy is often noted for her terse and telegraphic style, which somehow brews up a profound paradox that seems bent on haunting the reader: despite a sort of zero-at-the-bone baseline, her fict
Animals,strange beasts, bureaucrats, businessmen, and nightmares populate thiscollection of stories by Franz Kafka. These matchless short works, allunpublished during Kafka’s lifetime, range from the
"A unique and personal portrait of the beloved, legendary Swiss writer, finally in English. After a nervous breakdown in 1929, Robert Walser spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in menta
In the course of compiling his highly acclaimed three-volume biography of Kafka, while foraying to libraries and archives from Prague to Israel, Reiner Stach made one astounding discovery after anothe
Inspired by one of the finest lyrics in the English language, the anonymous, pre-Shakespearean “Tom o’Bedlam” (“By a knight of ghosts and shadows / I summoned am to tourney / Ten leagues beyond the wi
For André, a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of “the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table, and our family.” He loves the land, fears his austere, pious father, who preaches f
A pair of lovers—a young female journalist and an older man who owns an isolated farm in Brazil—spend the night together. The next day they proceed to destroy each other. Amid vitriolic insults and sc
Vertigo is the marvelous first novel by W.G. Sebald: "The most exciting, and most mysteriously sublime, of contemporary European writers" (James Wood, The New Republic). An unnamed
New Directions is delighted to announce beautiful new editions of these three classic Sebald novels, including his two greatest works, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. All three novels are disti
The difficulty (and necessity) of translation is concisely described in Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, a close reading of different translations of a single poem from the Tang Dynasty—from a tr
This gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old for over half a century and is now a modern classic. Dylan Thomas (1914–1953), one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth cent
Gathered for the first time in English, and spanning his entire career, Vampire in Love offers a selection of the Spanish master Enrique Vila-Matas’s finest short stories. An effeminate, hunchbacked b
In her first full-length collection published in the United States, Sylvia Legris probes and peels, carves and cleaves, amputates and dissects, to reveal the poetic potential of human and animal anato
Yoshimasu Gozo is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Japanese literature and art. His creative endeavors have spanned over half a century since the publication of his first book of poet
A collection of three stories describes the origins of the universe featured in the author's previous novel, "Telex from Cuba," and includes tales of the illegal broadcasts of a faith healer and a pre
This new collection of fantastic, lesser-known one-acts contains some of Williams’s most potent, witty and wild late plays written from 1971 to 1982—Upper East Side ladies dine out during the apocalyp
An erotic, sensual, and comic novel that was a generation ahead of its time, Moise and the World of Reason has at its center the need of three people for each other: Lance, the beautiful black figure
Michael Palmer’s new book—a collection in two parts, “The Laughter of the Sphinx” and “Still (a cantata—or nada—for Sister Satan)”—contains 52 poems.The title poem begins “The laughter of the Sphinx /
In 1853, bursting with emotion, Charles Baudelaire confessed to his muse Madame Sabatier: “Sometimes, I can find relief only in composing verses for you.” Is there any better way of expressing feeling
Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book—a key inspiration for Rivka Galchen’s new book—contains a list of “Things That Make One Nervous.” And wouldn’t the blessed event top almost anyone’s list?Little Labors is a
When it opened in Chicago in 1944, The Glass Menagerie marked a turningpoint in American theater and in the life of its then unknown author. TennesseeWilliams's elegiac masterpiece brought a radical
Hailed by the New York Times as one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century, Spring and All is a manifesto of the imagination, a hybrid of alternating sections of prose and free verse that coal
Crazy, funny and gorgeously dark, The Adventures of Korn?l Esti sets into rollicking action a series of adventures about a man and his wicked doppleg?nger,who breathes every forbidden idea of his chi
When it opened in Chicago in 1944, The Glass Menagerie marked a turningpoint in American theater and in the life of its then unknown author. TennesseeWilliams’s elegiac masterpiece brought a ra
Slippery figures in anomalous situations — ghosts, spies, bodyguards, criminals — haunt these stories by Javier Mar!as: the characters come bearing theirstrange and special secrets, and n
This newly revised and greatly expanded edition of Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems is intended to articulate Pound for the twenty-first century. Gone are manyof the “stale creampuffs” (
This important work, first published in 1934, is a concise statement of Pound’saesthetic theory. It is a primer for the reader who wants to maintain an active,critical mind and become increasin
"Jenny Erpenbeck's writing is a lure that leads us-off-centre, as one travels into a vortex-into the most haunted and haunting territory. This is a novel of profound clarity and precise grief."-Anne M
Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Clash of Images is a sweet, Borgesian mix of bildungsroman memoir, family history, short-story collection, fable, and literary criticism.Written in a graceful and charm
presents a poetic autobiography of one of Israel's living literary masters. The book moves from shockingly potent political poems to love lyrics that are as explosive and bawdy as they are tender; fr
Resembling a musical sextet where no two instruments are the same, but all instruments blend to form a single sound, Henry Miller's Sextet combines six jive-talkin', fresh, and impromptu pieces of wr
The three fates--now three Vietnamese "princesses" in France--were spirited away as little children by their powerful grandmother when Saigon fell to the communists. Now the two sisters and their cou
As BolaAno's friend and literary executor, Ignacio EchevarrA-a, once suggested, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto BolaAno's fictional universe. Reading this novel, the reader is prese
