Winner of the 2015 Arno Reinfrank Literaturpreis “Ruven Preuk stands apart from the village, on an August day in 1911, and listens.” Thus begins an epic bildungsroman about the life of Ruven Preuk, so
At the Burning Abyss is Franz Fühmann’s magnum opus—a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent
Beloved Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931–89) began his career in the early 1950s as a poet. Over the next decade, Bernhard wrote thousands of poems and published four volumes of intensely wrought
The work of poet Georg Trakl, a leading Austrian-German expressionist, has been praised by many, including his contemporaries Rainer Maria Rilke and Else Lasker-Schüler, as well as his patron Ludwig W
In the historic tradition of calendar stories and calendar illustrations, author and film director Alexander Kluge and celebrated visual artist Gerhard Richter have composed December, a collection o
For more than three decades, artist William Kentridge has explored in his work the nature of subjectivity, the possibilities of revolution, the Enlightenment’s legacy in Africa, and the nature of time
Critical Essays (Situations I) contains essays on literature and philosophy from a highly formative period of French philosopher and leading existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s life, the years between 1
Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre counted among his friends and associates some of the most esteemed intellectuals, writers, and artists of the twentieth century. In Portraits (Situations IV), Sartre colle
This book offers the first comprehensive examination of the work of Bolivian political thinker Rene Zavaleta (1939-–84), whose ideas were a key influence on many of the indigenous activists and ideolo
Bolivia’s foremost social and political theorist, Rene Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and ministerial posts with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in the 1950s and ’60s, before eventually align
At a time when Turkey is struggling for its secular identity, resisting the influence of ISIS, and finding itself at the heart of the European refugee crisis, Ozen Yula, accomplished Turkish playwrigh
In her landmark study Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre, Jill Dolan departed from historical writings on utopia, which suggest social reorganization and the redistribution of wealth a
Clowns are not just the stuff of backyard children’s parties anymore. These days, clown doctors see patients—especially children—to introduce humor and imagination into an anxiety-filled and painful e
Maryse Conde is one of the best known and beloved French Caribbean literary voices. The author of more than twenty novels, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 and has lo
It’s the early 1970s and Dion Katthusen, thirteen, is growing up fatherless in a small village in northern Germany. An only child plagued with a devastating stutter, Dion is ostracized by his peers an
Klaus Merz is one of the most prominent, prolific, and versatile Swiss writers working today. Celebrated as a master of concise, condensed sentences, Merz brings depth and resonance to spare narrative
A few years after the deadly 2011 terror attack in Norway’s Utoya Island, Otto and Sofie are attempting to put the pieces of their life back together without their beloved daughter, who was murdered a
Bhaskar Chakrabarti’s poetry is synonymous with the romantic melancholia inherent to Calcutta. His trenchant poetic voice was one of the most significant to emerge in the 1960s and ’70s—perhaps the mo
Chemmeen tells the story of the relationship between Karutthamma, a Hindu woman from the fisherfolk community, and Pareekkutty, the son of a Muslim fish wholesaler. Unable to marry Pareekkutty for rel
Most discussions on the India’s First War of Independence from British colonial rule in 1857 have centered on the role played by the Mughal emperor, the nawab of Awadh, and other sundry members of mos
When a bomb explodes in a university cafe, nineteen students are killed. The Empty Space begins with the identification of these slain students. Slowly, each individual is claimed and taken away for a
Ruhiton Kurmi has been in jail for seven years. Once a notorious Naxalite—a militant leftist revolutionary—he is now a withered shell; a man broken by police torture, racked with fevers and sores. The
A camera makes enemies; a sketchbook, friends. Firm in this belief, Irwin Allan Sealy carried to China just his pen and a book of blank pages. When the literary conference that took him there ended an
April 30, 1945, marked an end of sorts in the Third Reich. The last business day before a national holiday and then a series of transfers of power, April 30 was a day filled with contradictions and be
Buddhism, love, Henry James, and the tango are just a few of the topics Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina’s master writer, and extraordinary conversationalist, discusses in the first volume of the remarkab
Swiss novelist Catherine Colomb is known as one of the most unusual and inventive francophone novelists of the twentieth century. Fascinated by the processes of memory and consciousness, her work has
First published in Italian in 1968, The World Saved by Kids was written in the aftermath of deep personal change and in the context of what Elsa Morante called the “great youth movement exploding agai
This acclaimed novel is set during the Lebanese Civil War and offers a rare depiction of women’s experiences amid this sprawling, region-defining conflict. In Alawiya Sobh’s hands, the details of ever
The ten plays in this collection offer unprecedented grassroots perspectives on the jubilation, terror, hope, and heartbreak of mass uprising as seen during and in the wake of the Tahrir Square demons
Theater in New Zealand began as a tool of the British Empire, imported along with Christianity, seeds, and other commodities as a way of acculturating the indigenous Maori population. In the decades s
A controversial figure of the postwar French literary and cultural scene, Marguerite Duras has exerted a powerful hold on readers around the world. This volume of interviews—hailed on its French publi
This collection of four stories by the writer George Steiner called “one of the masters of European fiction” is, as longtime fans of Thomas Bernhard would expect, bleakly comic and inspiringly rancoro
Dominique Edde met novelist and playwright Jean Genet in the 1970s. And she never forgot him. “His presence,” she writes, “gave me the sensation of icy fire. Like his words, his gestures were full, ca
Lutz Seiler grew up in the former East Germany and has lived most of his life outside Berlin. His poems, not surprisingly, are works of the border, the in-between, and the provincial, marked by whispe
One of the central figures from a remarkable generation of French-language poets, Pierre Chappuis has thus far only been represented in English translation in fragments: a few poems here and there in
In 2010, Robert Menasse journeyed to Brussels to begin work on a novel centered on the European Union. His extended stay resulted in a completely different book—Enraged Citizens, European Peace and De
Last season, Seagull Books published the first three volumes in a new series collecting essays and interviews by the late French thinker Roland Barthes. This season they’ll bring the five-volume set t
Last season, Seagull Books published the first three volumes in a new series collecting essays and interviews by the late French thinker Roland Barthes. This season they’ll bring the five-volume set t
Toby Litt is best known for his “hip-lit” fiction, which, in its sharing of characters and themes across numerous stories and novels, has always taken an unusual, hybrid form. InMutants, he applies hi
The second book in Seagull’s ambitious series of Georg Trakl’s works, Sebastian Dreaming was the second, and final, collection prepared for publication by Trakl himself. Published after his death, it
