When war breaks out, a swarm of other industries quickly surrounds the battlefield; aid agencies, NGOs, international media corporations, mercenaries and private investors... all descend on the conflict like a second wave of invaders. Never was this...

A benign old monk listens to a prospective novice's tale of depravity, violence, and carnivorous excess while a nice little family drama – in which nearly everyone dies – unfurls. But in this tale of sharp hatchets, bad water, and a rusty WWII mortar...

In this novel by celebrated South African writer Zakes Mda, Kristin Uys, a tough magistrate who lives alone with her cat in the Roodepoort district of Johannesburg, goes on a one-woman crusade to wipe out prostitution in her town. Her reasons are per...

"In 1968-1969 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides", wrote Helene Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and novelist. Instead of suicide, she began to dream o...

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" tells the moving tale of an Italian family living in Scotland during the rise of Mussolini and his rule in Italy. The story is told from the point of view of Lucia, the family's daughter, who, at 83, reflects on her childho...

After the failed revolutions of 1848, Galicia has been brought under the rule of the Habsburg Empire, and the Zemka family find themselves embroiled in the struggle for Polish independence. This is a history of Eastern Europe told in miniature throug...

A work unprecedented in world literature, this unique volume contains a new translation of Leo Tolstoy's controversial novella, "The Kreutzer Sonata", which was initially banned by Russian censors. In addition, available to English readers for the fi...

Although originally published separately, Patrick Modiano's three novellas form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Modiano draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of ot...

Written from a vantage point both high and deliberately narrow, the early novels of the late British master Anthony Powell nevertheless deal in the universal themes that would become a substantial part of his oeuvre: pride, greed, and the strange dri...

Harking from the golden age of fiction set in American suburbia – the school of John Updike and Cheever – this work from the great American humorist Peter De Vries looks with laughter upon its lawns, its cocktails, and its slightly unreal feeling of...