'That sense of the meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka, to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work' Malcolm BradburyAlienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life.
'One of the greatest love stories in world literature' Vladimir NabokovThe heroine of Tolstoy's epic of love and self-destruction, Anna Karenina has beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son, but feels that her life is empty until she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.
Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'.
This rich and unforgettable story of sexual intrigue and political scheming, written by the Spanish feminist and intellectual Emilia Pardo Bazan, deserves recognition as one of the great nineteenth-century novels.
When the down-at-heel Princess Zasyekin moves next door to the country estate of Vladimir Petrovich's parents, he instantly and overwhelmingly falls in love with his new neighbour's daughter, Zinaida.
A superb new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening, strange and visionary short fictionAfter Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of literary disobedience, his executor refused to agree to Kafka's wish that his great mass of unpublished fiction be destroyed.
'I felt the powerful strength of my family overrunning me like a heavy rush of water'For Andr , a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of 'the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table and our family'.
This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the great Japanese short story, from its modern origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable works being written today.
'The father of contemporary European detective fiction' Ann Cleeves Maigret savoured the sensations of his youth again: the cold, stinging eyes, frozen fingertips, an aftertaste of coffee.
A charming, mind-bending and anarchic book of imagined civilizations'Most cosmic civilizations long for things, in the depths of their souls, they would never openly admit to.
A new translation and abridgement of one of the four classical Chinese novels - an epic story of warring factions in the era of China's Han dynastyPart historical and part legend, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms dramatizes the lives of feudal lords and their retainers, recounting their personal and military battles, intrigues, and struggles to achieve dominance for almost a hundred years.
A Heart so White is the breathtaking international bestseller and IMPAC Award-winning masterpiece by Javier Mar as, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013.
'It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered' Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years.
While the marquis de Sade was drafting The 120 Days of Sodom in the Bastille, another libertine marquis in a nearby cell was also writing a novelone equally outrageous, full of sex and slander, and more revealing for what it had to say about the conditions of writers and writing itself.
The Night Circus meets Lonely Castle in the Mirror in this multi-award-winning Japanese bestseller, available finally in an English translation by Philip Gabriel, a translator of Murakami- AN FT BEST SUMMER READ 2023- OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD IN JAPAN- WINNER OF THE NAOKI PRIZE AND THE JAPAN BOOKSELLERS' AWARD- A MAJOR MOVIE RELEASE IN JAPAN'A thrilling and often nail-biting depiction of music, friendship, and personal demons' OBSERVER'Propulsive and poetic' KIRKUS______________________Welcome to a magical world of music, friendship and rivalry .
A feminist pioneer, writer, and patron of the arts and literature in Buenos Aires, Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) was a larger-than-life personality of legendary vitality.
Martha and the infamous League of Pensioners are back in The Little Old Lady Strikes Back, from the author of the smash-hit The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules.
"e;Comparisons do not do justice to the complexity of Stefansson's book, nor the uniqueness of his prose"e; DANIEL MASON, author of North Woods"e;Stef nsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy"e; EILEEN BATTERSBY, TLS"e;A rich depiction of life, love and loss .
Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary AwardWinner of the Ivo Andri Grand Prize for best novel of 2022From the INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR Eugene Vodolazkin winner of the BIG BOOK AWARD, the LEO TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA AWARD, and the READ RUSSIA AWARDFor fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Umberto EcoVodolazkins new novelBrisbaneis a sophisticated and frequently moving study in dissonance, dedicated to pointing out contrasts between art and life, beauty and decay, intention and outcome.
In sieben Jahren begegnet eine junge Studentin sieben Mannern: dem Astrologen, dem Epileptiker, dem Philosophen, dem Priester, dem Physiker, dem Kunstler und dem Psychiater.
Den jungen Mailänder Grafen Aleardo verschlägt es bei seiner Suche nach zum Verkauf stehenden Ländereien auf eine einsame Insel vor der Küste Portugals, die nicht einmal auf den Landkarten zu finden ist.
