In the second book of Arno Camenisch's Alp trilogy, "Behind the Station," is told through the eyes of two young brothers growing up in a small, secluded village in a valley flanked by the alpine mountains. Written in the same style as "The Alp," we start to believe that there's little difference between the children and the adults in this village, save for their love for mischief and ghost stories. The grandmother, the parents, and the neighbors: it is an amphitheater full of drama, somehow colored through the eyes of children. Arno Camenisch's quiet control and powerful descriptions of villag... View More...
In the second book of Arno Camenisch's Alp trilogy, "Behind the Station," is told through the eyes of two young brothers growing up in a small, secluded village in a valley flanked by the alpine mountains. Written in the same style as "The Alp," we start to believe that there's little difference between the children and the adults in this village, save for their love for mischief and ghost stories. The grandmother, the parents, and the neighbors: it is an amphitheater full of drama, somehow colored through the eyes of children. Arno Camenisch's quiet control and powerful descriptions of villag... View More...
Anewly translated novel from the great rediscovered Hungarian writer: a tautly suspenseful story of unrequited love and its still vivid consequences twenty years later. What is it to be in love with a pathological liar and fantasist? Esther is, and has been for the more than two decades since Lajos disappeared from her life. Now all these years later, Lajos is returning, and the news brings both panic and excitement. While no longer young and thoroughly skeptical about Lajos, Esther still remembers how incredibly alive she felt when he was around. His presence bewitches everyone, and the great... View More...
A longtime cult-classic in Denmark, this novel about dissolution and despair has been out of print in the US for over eighty years until now. Ole Jastrau is the very model of an enterprising and ambitious young man of letters, poised on the brink of what is sure to be a distinguished career as a critic. In fact he is teetering on the brink of an emotional and moral abyss. Bored with his beautiful wife and chafing at the burdens of fatherhood, disdainful of the commercialism and political opportunism of the newspaper he works for, he feels more and more that his life lacks meaning. He flirts wi... View More...
"To write of her that which has never been written of any other woman." And with these words from Dante, Jean-Philippe Toussaint sets out once more to deepen and broaden his depiction of one of contemporary fiction's most fully realized female characters: haute couturi re Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte. Having traced the ups, downs, ins, and outs of Marie's relationship with the unnamed narrator through three previous novels, Toussaint brings his customary nuanced rumination and nimble wit to this concluding volume, which takes us back to the Tokyo of Making Love and the Elba of The Tr... View More...
A preeminent work of modern Greek literature, this provocative novel poses difficult questions about the nation's Nazi occupation and early Civil War years First published in 1994 to a storm of controversy, Thanassis Valtinos's probing novel Orthokost defied standard interpretations of the Greek Civil War. Through the documentary-style testimonies of multiple narrators, among them the previously unheard voices of right-wing collaborationists, Valtinos provides a powerful, nuanced interpretation of events during the later years of Nazi occupation and the early stages of the nation's Civil War... View More...
The first novel in Arno Camenisch's celebrated "alpine" trilogy is set during a single summer. The four main (unnamed) characters are a dairyman, his farmhand, a cowherd, and a swineherd who all live and work in close proximity--but this is no "Heidi." Theirs is an existence marked by dangerous work, solitude, cruelty, alcoholism, and sheer stubbornness; but the author's handling of these situations and lives is characterized at all times by affection, surreal humor, and a brilliant ear for the sounds of the setting. View More...
When the Iberian Peninsula breaks free of Europe and begins to drift across the North Atlantic, five people are drawn together on the newly formed island-first by surreal events and then by love. "A splendidly imagined epic voyage...a fabulous fable" (Kirkus Reviews). Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.
Giovanni Orelli's docufictional phantasmagoria revisits a lesser-known painting by Paul Klee titled "Alphabet I," which features black letters and symbols scrawled over the sports page of a newspaper reporting the results of the 1938 Swiss National Cup. This play of coincidences sets the stage for Orelli's encyclopedic portrait of European culture under Nazism, where a motley crew of philosopher-peasants as well as historical luminaries like Arthur Schopenhauer, Vincent van Gogh, Viktor Shklovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Klee himself, and the titular footballer Eugene Walaschek all meet at the local... View More...
Giovanni Orelli's docufictional phantasmagoria revisits a lesser-known painting by Paul Klee titled "Alphabet I," which features black letters and symbols scrawled over the sports page of a newspaper reporting the results of the 1938 Swiss National Cup. This play of coincidences sets the stage for Orelli's encyclopedic portrait of European culture under Nazism, where a motley crew of philosopher-peasants as well as historical luminaries like Arthur Schopenhauer, Vincent van Gogh, Viktor Shklovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Klee himself, and the titular footballer Eugene Walaschek all meet at the local... View More...
