Hans Magnus Enzensberger, widely regarded as Germany's greatest living poet, was already well known in the 1960s, the tempestuous decade of which "Tumult" is an autobiographical record. Derived from old papers, notes, jottings, photos, and letters th...

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 demonstrations. Collectively tracing events as they unfo...

Originally published in Italian in 1965, "A Test of Powers" was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes an...

In "This Strange Idea of the Beautiful", Francois Jullien explores what it means when we say something is beautiful. Bringing together ideas of beauty from both Eastern and Western philosophy, Jullien challenges the assumptions underlying our commonl...

"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 seven plays that comprise Chiori Miyagawa's "Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays" explore themes of memory and identity. Her plays combine poetic language with harsh reality, and time and space are fluid in the worlds she creates – they conver...

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as many other communist totalitarian regimes around the world. But it would be naive to assume that this historic, symbolic event and its aftermath have com...

Set in Malaya during the British protectorate, Sartre's "Typhus" centres on the improbable couple formed by the disgraced former doctor Georges, who has sunk to the lowest depths of a highly stratified colonial society, and Nellie, a down-at-heel nig...

Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic here presents an unorthodox, imaginative take on the transition from Communism to capitalism in the former Soviet Union. Three characters – a dog, an underdog, and a cat – offer the reader narratives that reflect on...

Though the recent election of American President Barack Obama and his signing of the executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay signals a considerable shift away from the policies of the Bush era, the lessons to be learned from the war on...