Born in 1931, the illegitimate child of an abandoned mother, Thomas Bernhard was brought up by an eccentric grandmother and an adored grandfather in right-wing, Catholic Austria. He ran away from home at age fifteen. Three years later, he contracted pneumonia and was placed in a hospital ward for the old and terminally ill, where he observed first-hand—and with unflinching acuity—the cruel nature of protracted suffering and death. From the age of twenty-one, everything he wrote was shaped by the urgency of a dying man’s testament—and where this account of his life ends, his art begins. Included in this edition is My Prizes, a collection of Bernhard’s viciously funny and revelatory essays on his later literary life. Here is a portrait of the artist as a prize-winner: laconic, sardonic, shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself.

    Kessler’s immersion in the new art and literature of Paris, London, and Berlin unfolds in the first part of the diaries. This refined world gives way to vivid descriptions of the horrific fighting on the Eastern and Western fronts of World War I, the intriguing private discussions among the German political and military elite about the progress of the war, as well as Kessler’s account of his role as a diplomat with a secret mission in Switzerland.   Profoundly modern and often prescient, Kessler was an erudite cultural impresario and catalyst who as a cofounder of the avant-garde journal Pan met and contributed articles about many of the leading artists and writers of the day. In 1903 he became director of the Grand Ducal Museum of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, determined to make it a center of aesthetic modernism together with his friend the architect Henry van de Velde, whose school of design would eventually become the Bauhaus. When a public scandal forced his resignation in 1906, Kessler turned to other projects, including collaborating with the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the German composer Richard Strauss on the opera Der Rosenkavalier and the ballet The Legend of Joseph, which was performed in 1914 by the Ballets Russes in London and Paris. In 1913 he founded the Cranach-Presse in Weimar, one of the most important private presses of the twentieth century.   The diaries present brilliant, sharply etched, and often richly comical descriptions of his encounters, conversations, and creative collaborations with some of the most celebrated people of his time: Otto von Bismarck, Paul von Hindenburg, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Sarah Bernhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Marie Rilke, Paul Verlaine, Gordon Craig, George Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville-Barker, Max Klinger, Arnold Böcklin, Max Beckmann, Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Éduard Vuillard, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Ida Rubinstein, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Pierre Bonnard, and Walther Rathenau, among others.   Remarkably insightful, poignant, and cinematic in their scope, Kessler’s diaries are an invaluable record of one of the most volatile and seminal moments in modern Western history.

    Running, starved and shoeless, through the streets of Budapest, ALL THE PRETTY SHOES is the story she survived to write.“Marika Roth’s narrative holds us captive throughout one hell of a ride: betrayal, sexual predators, love affairs, modeling career, kidnapping of her children... Not to be missed!” —Tova Laiter, Producer, The Scarlett Letter and Varsity Blues“A story about the indomitable spirit of a woman faced with unimaginable horrors and impossible odds. Roth tells her extraordinary tale with clarity and a remarkable lack of self-pity.” —Jillian Lauren, Author, SOME GIRLS: MY LIFE IN A HAREM“I remember Marika calling to say she’d discovered a memorial to the atrocity she’d witnessed … I googled it and suddenly the draft of her memoir in my hands felt very, very heavy. This is a powerful book about overcoming the ongoing, chronic victimization that is all too often the prolonged second act of the refugee ordeal.” —Robert Morgan Fisher, Award-Winning Writer“…plucks at an emotional inner chord and serves as a portrayal of hope for the human condition.” —Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group“I have read books about how people suffered during WWII, like Imre Kertesz who won the Nobel Prize, but none moved me as much as ALL THE PRETTY SHOES. Roth’s style, the way she narrated how cruel life can be, without judging others, truly brought tears to my eyes.” —Vivian Nagy, Hungary“A story of self-discovery, wonderfully told, full of such drama that one can hardly believe that an innocent little girl could endure so much. I couldn’t put it down!” —Mary Stokes-Rees, China“The story of Anne Frank cannot even compare to what Marika went through. A book all teenagers and young adults should read.” —Shelia Durfey, Independent

    Rarely, however, does one hear about the experiences of German children during World War II. Coming of age amidst the chaos, brutality, and destruction of war in their homeland, they had no understanding of what was happening around them and often suffered severe trauma and physical abuse. They too became victims of the madness perpetrated by the totalitarian state. This haunting memoir tells the riveting story of one such German child. Born in Berlin in 1941, Sabina de Werth Neu knew little during her earliest years except the hardships and fear of a war refugee. She and her two sisters and mother were often on the run and sometimes homeless in the bombed-out cities of wartime Germany. At times they lived in near-starvation conditions. And as the Allies stormed through the crumbling German defenses, the mother and children were raped and beaten by marauding Russian soldiers. After the war, like so many Germans, they wrapped themselves in a cloak of deafening silence about their recent national and personal history, determined to forget the past. The result was that Sabina spent much of her time wrestling with shame and bouts of crippling depression. Finally, after decades of silence, she could no longer suppress the memories and began reconstructing her young life by writing down what had previously seemed unspeakable. Illustrated by vintage black-and-white family photographs, the book is filled with poignant scenes: her abused but courageous mother desperately trying to protect her children through the worst, the sickening horror of viewing Holocaust footage on newsreels shortly after the war, the welcome sight of American troops bringing hot meals to local schools, and the glimmer of hope finally offered by the Marshall Plan, which the author feels was crucial to her own survival and that of Germany as a whole. This book not only recalls the experiences of a now-distant war, but also brings to mind the disrupting realities of present-day refugee children. There is perhaps no more damning indictment of war than to read about its effects on children, its helpless victims.

    My father worked as a civil engineer architect and my mother was a hard working housewife looking after her family.War breaks out just before my tenth birthday and just as my mother gives birth to my second brother. My father is conscripted into the army and leaves home for Norway. Although life in Düsseldorf stays normal for a while, the air raids soon get worse and the authorities decide to evacuate my school to a small village in the south of Germany near the Czech border. While I am there our block of flats receives a hit and my mother and brothers are evacuated to Pomerania in the east of the country, close to the border with Poland, not far from the Baltic Sea.My father meanwhile fights first in Norway, then France and finally on the Russian front.At the end of October 1942 my friends and I are told we need to leave the town we have been sent to and return to Düsseldorf. But I can't return to Dusseldorf, my family are not there. Plans are made for me to travel east and I travel alone by train for 2 days to reach my mother in Pomerania.Our family, which now includes a baby girl, my new little sister, spend two peaceful years in Glowitz, hardly aware of the fighting in other parts of Europe and the world. My father returns on leave and tells how the tide of war is turning against Germany. Finally the German eastern front collapses and in January 1945, the Russians ride into Glowitz. Drunken soldiers roam the streets and cause havoc with murder, rape and pillage a daily reality.A few days later the second wave of soldiers sweep into the village and begin interrogating the women, of which I'm one. They keep about twenty of us to be marched eastward with women from other towns and villages for slave labour in Russia. The Russians then force us to walk to the town of Stolp to join a crowd of women already locked up in the town’s prison. Two weeks go by and then, with hundreds of other women, I leave the prison under armed guard and trudge eastwards, to an unknown future. I discover that our destination is probably the factories east of Moscow and I decide I must escape before reaching the Russian border. My friend Ruth and I, against all odds, manage to slip away from our captors but then have to find our way back home through dangerous forests without food or proper clothing, a journey laced with many heart-stopping moments and anguish. I eventually reach Glowitz and my family, who keep me hidden from our enemies.The Russians make way for the Poles, who take control of eastern Pomerania. Life is very hard for all and my mother decides we have to return to Düsseldorf. But without trains the only way to get there is on foot – a journey of almost 1200 kilometres, fraught with danger.For nine weeks our family tramp the roads heading westward, our belongings hidden in the pram under Marlene, my little sister. Awful scenes of devastation and horror meet us as we walk through bombed-blasted cities, past a battlefield strewn with the corpses of our German soldiers and kilometre after kilometre of ruined, blackened buildings.After a long arduous journey we reach Neckar Street. Is our house still standing? Where is my father, is he still alive?

    They force you to mature and give you no choice but to cope with the realities of the world. In this memoir, author Sigrid Jackson tells what it was like being a child of war in East Germany before and after World War II. In "East German Girl, " Jackson describes what it was like to live through the bombing raids, food shortages, diphtheria, communism, and being forced to leave her home with her mother and brother to be relocated to a rural farm. Using personal anecdotes to illustrate how God has worked in her life, Jackson demonstrates the courage that was necessary to escape East Germany to freedom in the west when she was just twelve years old. From an alcoholic, absentee father to an unsuspecting future husband, life continuously threw her curveballs, but "East German Girl" narrates an inspirational story of war, communism, family betrayal, and finally resilience.

    But they are vividly etched in my mind, and impossible to erase. My name is Cecylia Ziobro; the only child born to my parents. I am a Polish American who survived my early childhood years in the Nazi slave labor camps of World War II. " During World War II, a young Polish American girl named Cecylia was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp. After more than sixty years, with the sincere encouragement from her friends and family, she has decided to share her extraordinary story. In surprising detail, Cecylia recounts the daily struggle, physical and mental anguish, humiliation, fear and yes, even humor of her otherwise bleak life in the camps.Hers is a story that centers around a little-known aspect of the war, and it is told here from a fresh perspective, that of a young girl facing unimaginable horror and unexpected hope as a prisoner in a Nazi labor camp.

    The nine stories in Vladimir's Mustache - familiar to readers of Ninth Letter, Cincinnati Review, Witness and Salt Hill - represent a rare feat of ventriloquism and range. From an Italian castrato who longs to sing for the tsar, to a method actor who learns the danger of losing himself in a role after he is cast as Hitler, to the men and women who meet through "mail order bride agencies, all of Stephan Eirik Clark's stories are told with a humor that's never far removed from an underlying sadness. Regardless of his where he situates his attention, Clark writes with a voice that never falters, telling with great emotional honesty the story of men and women who are trapped by circumstances, alienated by history, or irrevocably estranged from the culture at large.

    Its chronicle of life in the two Vilna ghettos is the only historical document describing life in the small ghetto from its formation until its liquidation. The book is a historical document of primary importance. It is also an expression of the innermost thoughts and feelings of a single individual whose will to survive and to bring this story to the judgment of future generations was stronger than iron.

    A series of narrow escapes in their hometown of Shavl - Siauliai in the Lithuanian language - and threats of betrayal by formerly friendly non-Jewish neighbours failed to extinguish the family's spirit. In telling their story, the book offers a shocking look at the daily lives of those imprisoned in the ghetto and the dramatic events that shape their individual and collective fate in the Lithuanian Holocaust.Sir Martin Gilbert describes Ruta's Closet as "one of the finest Holocaust memoirs."Author Saul Issroff sums it up as "being like 'Sophie's Choice' but better in terms of its inspring message."More information at rutascloset.com, Twitter.com/RutasCloset & Facebook.com/RutasCloset