Together Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt are not only two of the most esteemed Swiss writers of the twentieth century, but arguably two of the most important European writers since World War II. The remarkable letters gathered here document their...

In "The Tale of the Talking Face", eminent Indian artist K. G. Subramanyan offers a stinging parable of democracy gone wrong by narrating and illustrating the story of a princess whose autocratic rule brought nothing but suffering to her people, desp...

Annemarie Schwarzenbach – journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and traveler – has become a European cult figure for bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late 1980s. "Lyric Novella" is her story of a young man's...

It's Switzerland in the 1920s when the two lovers first meet. She is young, beautiful, and rich. In contrast, he can barely support himself and is interested only in music. By the end of their lives, he is a famous conductor and the richest man in th...

Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-2001) was a Senegalese poet and philosopher who in 1960 also became the first president of the Republic of Senegal. In "African Art as Philosophy", Souleymane Bachir Diagne takes a unique approach to reading Senghor's infl...

From Shakespeare to Beckett, the contradictory figure of the fool who possesses unexpected wisdom has been a popular and effective literary trope and rhetorical figure for centuries. Philosophy needs idiots too, argues Keson Sutherland in "Stupefacti...

"Summer Resort", the first novel by noted translator Esther Kinsky, is set in a village somewhere on the endless Hungarian plain. It is the hottest summer in memory and everyone in the village dreams of the sweet life in Udulo, a summer resort on a r...

In "The Shadow-Boxing Woman", a novel from German writer Inka Parei, a decaying apartment building in post-Wall Berlin is home to Hell, a young woman with a passion for martial arts. When Hell's neighbor disappears she sets out across the city in sea...

One night in the middle of winter, as deep snow covers the mountains and forests, a doctor is crossing the ridge in Austria from Traich to Foding to see a patient. He stumbles over a body in the darkness and fears it is a corpse. But it's not a corps...

Hans Magnus Enzensberger has mastered poetry, novels, and the intricate balance between history and fiction, but he's never done anything quite like this before. For the writing of "Unlikely Progeny", Enzensberger developed a persona – Linda Quilt -c...