The Chess Set in the Mirror

Massimo Bontempelli

Illustrations by STO
Translated by Estelle Gilson

Trade Paper, 114 pp., $9.95
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Also see some images from the book.

Alone in a room with nothing but an old mirror and a chess set, a young boy anticipates a boring afternoon. But like Alice just before she fell down the rabbit hole—and wound up in Wonderland—this boy is about to embark on a marvellous adventure. Gazing at . . . [read more]

Cries in the New Wilderness

Mikhail N. Epstein

Translated from the Russian by Eve Adler
Also available in hardcover

Trade Paper, 236 pp., $12.00
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Retail: $15.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $12.00

Inside the disintegrating Soviet Union, Raisa Omarovna Gibaydulina, a professor of scientific atheism at the Moscow Institute of Atheism, compiles a selection of excerpts from the articles, sermons, manifestos, and other writings by members of banned religious sects. Copies of this classified reference manual, The New . . . [read more]

The Discovery of Slowness

Sten Nadolny

Foreword by Carl Honoré
Translated from the German by Ralph Freedman

Trade Paper, 325 pp., $16.95
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The Discovery of Slowness—a huge commercial and critical success across Europe, where it is considered the popular author's masterpiece—recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847).

Through the author's acute reading of history and his marvelous storytelling prowess, the reader follows John Franklin's development from aw . . . [read more]

For Solo Violin

Aldo Zargani

Translated from the Italian by Marina Harss

Trade Paper, 326 pp., $10.00
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Retail: $15.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $10.00

In an extraordinary literary debut, Aldo Zargani reconstructs the lost world of his Jewish childhood during the perilous years 1938–45 when he and his family fled from Fascists and Nazis in northern Italy. His haunting memoir acquires a cinematic intensity as he crosscuts from the blood-red stone spires of Basel, . . . [read more]

An Invisible Country

Stephan Wackwitz

Translated from the German by Stephen Lehmann
Foreword by Wendy Lesser

Hardcover, 254 pp., $20.00
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Retail: $24.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $20.00

Stephan Wackwitz's family "never spoke about the fact that the scene of their childhood and the site of the century's greatest crime were separated by nothing more than a longish walk and barely a decade." With insight and wit, Wackwitz breaks this silence in An Invisible Country, a learned meditatio . . . [read more]

Ovid's Metamorphoses

Ovid

Arthur Golding's translation of 1567
Introduction by John Frederick Nims

Trade Paper, 460 pp., $22.95
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Since its first publication in 1567, Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid has had an enormous influence on English literature and poetry. This is the translation that Shakespeare knew, read, and borrowed from. Golding's witty and beautiful verse continues to delight today's readers. This volume promises to be a valuable resource for students and teachers of Ovid and Shakespeare indeed, for anyo . . . [read more]

A Russian Schoolboy

Sergei Aksakov

Translated by J. D. Duff

Trade Paper, 191, $11.95
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"The happiness of childhood is the Golden Age, and the recollection of it has power to move the old man's heart with pleasure and with pain. Happy the man who once possessed it and is able to recall the memory of it in later years!"

Thus Sergei Aksakov recalls the "magic world" of youth, as he portrays the delights and tumults of Russian country life at the turn of t . . . [read more]

The Secret of Fame

Gabriel Zaid

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Hardcover, 182 pp., $14.95
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"Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writer—a cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him—you’ll see." —Paul Berman

In So Many B . . . [read more]

Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges

Fernando Sorrentino

Translated from the Spanish by Clark M. Zlotchew

Trade Paper, 196 pp., $16.95
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These wide-ranging conversations have an open and intimate tone, giving readers a uniquely personal glimpse of one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary world literature.

Interviewer Fernando Sorrentino, an Argentinian writer and anthologist, displays literary acumen, sensitivity, urbanity, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Borges' work. (In his prologue, Borges jokes that So . . . [read more]

So Many Books

Gabriel Zaid

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Trade Paper, 144 pp., $12.00
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"Reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them . . . It could even be said that to publish a book is to insert it into the middle of a conversation." —from So Many Books

Join the conversation! In So Many Books, Gabriel . . . [read more]

The Tables of the Law

Thomas Mann

Newly translated from the German by Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann. Afterword by Michael Wood.

Trade Paper, 120 pp., $12.00
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"Beautiful . . . one of the best short novels he has written." —New York Times Book Review

"Can rank with the best of Mann's writing" —Boston Globe

* * *

"His senses were hot, and so he yearned for spirituality, purity, and holiness—the invisible, which seemed to him spiritual, holy, and pure."read more]

Who Loves You Like This

Edith Bruck

Translated from the Italian by Thomas Kelso

Trade Paper, 135 pp., $12.00
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View the curriculum guide here.

"Edith Bruck tells the story of the 'Lager' with the inherent strength of a wounded animal and in confronting the unbearable sadness of it closes the account and does not surrender to the void. . . Unforgett . . . [read more]

Zift

Vladislav Todorov

Translated from the Bulgarian by Joseph Benatov

Trade Paper, 192 pp., $14.95
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"Pulp fiction by a historian of ideas." —Literary Weekly (Sofia)

"Tongue flambé." —Kultura

December 21, 1963: Having served 20 years for a murder he didn't commit, "Moth" exits Central Sofia Prison anticipating his first night of freedom. Instead he steps into a new and alien world—the nightmarish total . . . [read more]