Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.

    Set in the tumultuous first century A.D., between the year of Christ’s death and the outbreak of the Jewish War, Captivity recounts the adventures of the feeble-bodied, bookish Uri, a young Roman Jew.Frustrated with his hapless son, Uri’s father sends the young man to the Holy Land to regain the family’s prestige. In Jerusalem, Uri is imprisoned by Herod and meets two thieves and (perhaps) Jesus before their crucifixion. Later, in cosmopolitan Alexandria, he undergoes a scholarly and sexual awakening—but must escape a pogrom. Returning to Rome at last, he finds an entirely unexpected inheritance.Equal parts Homeric epic, brilliantly researched Jewish history, and picaresque adventure, Captivity is a dramatic tale of family, fate, and fortitude. In its weak-yet-valiant hero, fans will be reminded of Robert Graves’ classics of Ancient Rome, I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Restless Books will publish the first English edition of this important, 1,100-page work in four installments in 2015.Translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson“György Spiró presents a theory in novelistic form about the interwovenness of religion and politics, lays bare the inner workings of power, and gives insight into the art of survival…. This book is an incredible page turner; it reads easily and avidly like the greatest bestsellers while also going as deep as the greatest thinkers of European philosophy.”—Aegon Literary Award 2006 jury recommendation“A novel of education and a novel of adventure that brings to life ancient Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem with a vividness of detail that is stunning. Spiró’s prose is crisp and colloquial, the kind of prose that aims for precision rather than literary thrills. A serious and sophisticated novel that is also engrossing and highly readable is a rare thing. Captivity is such a novel.”—Ivan Sanders, Columbia University“Impossibly engrossing from the very first page…. Building on a huge volume of reference material, the novel rings true from both a historical and a literary point of view.”—Magda Ferch, Magyar NemzetBorn in 1946 in Budapest, award-winning dramatist, novelist, and translator György Spiró has earned a reputation as one of postwar Hungary’s most prominent and prolific literary figures. He teaches at ELTE University of Budapest, where he specializes in Slavic literatures.Tim Wilkinson gave up his job in the pharmaceutical industry to translate Hungarian literature and history. He is the primary translator of Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész. Wilkinson’s translation of Kertész’s Fatelessness won the PEN Club/Book of the Month Club Translation Prize in 2005.

    He demonstrates how hero stories continue to shape our world – arguing that we need them now more than ever.From the Stone Age to the Greek Tragedies, from Shakespeare to Robin Hood, we have always had our heroes. The hero is at the centre of formative myths in every culture and persists to this day in world-conquering books, films and TV shows. But why do these characters continue to inspire us, and why are they so central to storytelling?Scalpel-sharp on the roots of storytelling and enlightening on the history and science of myth, The Hero is essential reading for anyone trying to write or understand fiction. Child teaches us how these stories still shape our minds and behaviour in an increasingly confusing modern world, and with his trademark concision and wit, demonstrates that however civilised we get, we’ll always need heroes.

    Down and Out in Paris and London chronicles the adventures of a penniless British writer who finds himself rapidly descending into the seedy heart of two great European cities. This edition brings together two powerful works from one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.

    In these poignant essays and addresses, forged in the last years or even months of his life, he shows his profound concern for and dedication to the survival of Europe's spiritual integrity.These essays form the natural accompaniment to Zweig's renowned memoir The World of Yesterday, registering the same themes and evoking the same nostalgia for a world brutally consigned to history. They can be seen as a vital addendum to that major work or as a prefiguration. But perhaps even more so than the prose of the memoir, these essays, few in number but rich in content, reveal the essence of Zweig's thought.

    Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or–hüzün–that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

    Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

    Nine short non-fiction pieces with a forward by Shumon Basar.

    It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end fits into none of them.At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used in bodybuilding. At another level, it is a discussion by a major novelist of the relation between action and art, and his own highly polished art in particular. More personally, it is an account of one individual's search for identity and self-integration. Or again, the work could be seen as a demonstration of how an intensely individual preoccupation can be developed into a profound philosophy of life.All these elements are woven together by Mishima's complex yet polished and supple style. The confession and the self-analysis, the philosophy and the poetry combine in the end to create something that is in itself perfect and self-sufficient. It is a piece of literature that is as carefully fashioned as Mishima's novels, and at the same time provides an indispensable key to the understanding of them as art.The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal. The book is therefore a moving document, and is highly significant as a pointer to the future development of one of the most interesting novelists of modern times.

    Johanna Adorján's grandparents were unconventionally elegant and endlessly exotic; they survived the Holocaust, fled Budapest during the uprising of 1956, and lived a glamorous and mysterious life in Denmark—their pasts never discussed, even within the family. An Exclusive Love is Adorján's poignant and loving reconstruction of what may have happened on the day of their deaths, when Adorján was just twenty. Investigating the rich and surprising story of their lives, Adorján reveals the compromises they made and risks they took, and what it meant for her own family. This memoir tells of a couple's extravagant devotion to each other, and their granddaughter's later discovery of complex personalities, long-buried family secrets, and why they ultimately decided, together, to take their own lives. W. G. Sebald's translator Anthea Bell renders Adorján's brilliantly constructed, powerfully concise memoir with stunning clarity. Beautifully written, tender but never sentimental, An Exclusive Love is a vivid portrait of a true twentieth-century couple. .

    One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula. Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon’s fall.Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.

    All three books are set on the enchanted island of Corfu in the 1930s, and tell the story of the eccentric English family who moved there. For Gerald, the budding zoologist, Corfu was a natural paradise, teeming with strange birds and beasts that he could collect, watch and care for. But life was not without its problems - his family often objected to his animal-collecting activities, especially when the beasts wound up in the villa or - even worse - the fridge. With hilarious yet endearing portraits of his family and their many unusual hangers-on, The Corfu Trilogy also captures the beginnings of the author's lifelong love of animals. Recounted with immense humour and charm, this wonderful account of Corfu's natural history reveals a rare, magical childhood.

    An O. Henry Prize winner,  a two-time recipient of PEN Fiction Awards, and a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellow, Rose has written “a surprisingly fun, and moving, book with resonance” (Chicago Tribune).

    Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through “the uttermost part of the earth”— that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome—in search of almost forgotten legends, the descendants of Welsh immigrants, and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. An instant classic upon its publication in 1977, In Patagonia is a masterpiece that has cast a long shadow upon the literary world.

    He originally studied law and became an advocate in what is now Budapest. Encouraged by the reception of his first play, The Jewish Boy, he turned to writing, producing Working Days, and becoming editor of Életképek, the leading Hungarian literary journal. Following a revolution and the deposition of the Hapsburg dynasty, he became a political suspect. He spent the next fourteen years reviving the Magyar language, producing thirty romances and numerous other works. After the re-establishment of the Hungarian Constitution, he sat in parliament for twenty years, founded and edited the government organ Hon, and was later elevated to the upper house by the king. A Hungarian Nabob, considered by Jokai to be his best work, is a richly colored picture of aristocratic life, full of vivid, bustling scenes, various native characters, and humorous and dramatic incidents. The Nabob figure is a Hungarian potentate of vast estates, who lives amidst a crowd of retainers, wassailing companions, women, gamblers, fools, and gypsies. The plot relates to the intrigues of his dissolute heir, and his marriage with a young girl which serves to baffle them.