Austrian poet and playwright Ernst Jandl died in 2000, leaving behind his partner, poet Friederike Mayrocker – and bringing to an end a half century of shared life, and shared literary work. Mayrocker immediately began attempting to come to terms wit...

This powerful novel presents the early days of the transatlantic slave trade from a new perspective: that of the sub-Saharan population that became its first victims. Cameroonian novelist Leonora Miano presents a world on the brink of disappearing –...

Bolivia's foremost social and political theorist, Rene Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and ministerial posts with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in the 1950s and '60s, before eventually aligning with the Marxist left, where he developed the...

To create the poems in this collection, Nobel Prize–winner Herta Muller cut up countless newspapers and magazines in search of striking phrases, words, or even fragments of words, which she then arranged in a the form of a collage. "Father's on the P...

In 2010, Robert Menasse journeyed to Brussels to begin work on a novel centered on the European Union. His extended stay resulted in a completely different book – "Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficiencies", a work of nonfiction ex...

First published in Italian in 1968, "The World Saved by Kids" was written in the aftermath of deep personal change and in the context of what Elsa Morante called the "great youth movement exploding against the funereal machinations of the organized c...

Novelist Zakes Mda has made a name for himself as a key chronicler of the new, post-apartheid South Africa, casting a satirical eye on its claims of political unity, its rising black middle class, and other aspects of its complicated, multiracial soc...

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...

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...

Our contemporary celebration of difference, respect for pluralism, and avowal of identity politics have come to be regarded as the hallmarks of a progressive, modern democracy. Yet despite embracing many of its values, we have at the same time become...