Fado Alexandrino


António Lobo Antunes - 1983
    'In this new work by the foremost Portuguese novelist, the reunion of five men on the tenth anniversary of their battalion's return from Mozambique, Portugal's Vietnam, ends in a fatal stabbing - which ultimately serves as an act of liberation for the corrupt city of Lisbon.' Newsday

Summer in Baden-Baden


Leonid Tsypkin - 1981
    It is wintertime, late December: a species of "now." A narrator—Tsypkinis on a train going to Leningrad. And it is also mid-April 1867. The newly married Dostoyevskys, Fyodor, and his wife, Anna Grigor'yevna, are on their way to Germany, for a four-year trip. This is not, like J. M. Coetzee's The Master of St. Petersburg, a Dostoyevsky fantasy. Neither is it a docu-novel, although its author was obsessed with getting everything "right." Nothing is invented, everything is invented. Dostoyevsky's reckless passions for gambling, for his literary vocation, for his wife, are matched by her all-forgiving love, which in turn resonates with the love of literature's disciple, Leonid Tsypkin, for Dostoyevsky. In a remarkable introductory essay (which appeared in The New Yorker), Susan Sontag explains why it is something of a miracle that Summer in Baden-Baden has survived, and celebrates the happy event of its publication in America with an account of Tsypkin's beleaguered life and the important pleasures of his marvelous novel.

The Radiant Way


Margaret Drabble - 1987
    Now they meet as old friends at a glittering New Year's Eve party to welcome in the 1980s. It is the dawn of the Thatcher era, and Britain is on the brink of great social and political upheaval. How will these three ambitious and confident middle-aged women survive the personal and professional challenges, and the changing values of the next decade? The Radiant Way brilliantly explores their loves, losses, hopes and fears, and the strength of their friendship.

Memoirs of a Peasant Boy


Xosé Neira Vilas - 1961
    A peasant boy, Balbino, tries to flee the repressive Galician society of the 30s and 40s by questioning, answering, and criticizing every aspect of social and religious restrictions.

The House with the Blind Glass Windows


Herbjørg Wassmo - 1981
    A tragic legacy of the German occupation, illegitimate Tora is a social outcast. Worse, Tora also has to cope with the fear of her brutish stepfather and his sexual assaults. She consoles herself with lonely fantasies about her real father, with books, and with the friendship and support of a few village women. This proletarian feminist novel is about the victimization of women, but also about women's solidarity and power. Awarded a coveted Nordic prize, this is the first volume of a trilogy.

The Pigeon


Patrick Süskind - 1987
    The novella tells the story of a day in the meticulously ordered life of bank security guard Jonathan Noel, who has been hiding from life since his wife left him for her Tunisian lover. When Jonathan opens his front door on a day he believes will be just like any other, he encounters not the desired empty hallway but an unwelcome, diabolical intruder . . .

Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid


Malcolm Lowry - 1968
    It is an autobiographical novel of Lowry's return to Mexico to look for his friend Marquez. The main character, an alcoholic writer, has problems finishing his books and with his publishers.

Wild Harbour


Ian Macpherson - 1936
    Faced with the threat of bombs, bacteriological warfare and poison gas, a married couple whose pacificism complels them to opt out of 'civilisation', take to the hills to live as fugitives in the wild.Plainly and simply told, Wild Harbour charts the practical difficulties, the successes and failures of living rough in the beautiful hills of remote Speyside. In this respect the book belongs to a tradition of Scottish fiction reflected in novels such as Stevenson's Kidnapped and Buchan's John MacNab. But it takes a darker and more contemporary turn, for although Hugh and his wife Terry learn to fend for themselves, they cannot escape from what the world has become. Their brief summer idyll is brought to an end as the forces of random and meaningless violence close over them.Written in 1936, Wild Harbour has lost none of its relevance in a post-nuclear age, nor its power to move and shock.

All Souls' Day


Cees Nooteboom - 1998
    Arthur Daane, a documentary film-maker and inveterate globetrotter, has lost his wife and child in a plane crash. In ALL SOULS' DAY we follow Arthur as he wanders the streets of Berlin, a city uniquely shaped by history. Berlin provides the backdrop for Daane's reflections on life as he plans his latest project - a self-funded film that will show the world through Daane's eyes. With a new circle of friends - a philosopher, a sculptor and a physicist - Arthur discusses everything from history to metaphysics, and the cumulative power of remembered images and philosophical musings on the meaning of our contemporary existence comes to permeate the atmosphere of the book. Then one cold, wintry day, Daane meets the young history student Elik Orange and his world is turned upside down. Whenever this mysterious woman beckons, Daane is compelled to follow. ALL SOULS' DAY is, finally, an elegiac love story in which the personal histories of the characters are skilfully interwoven with the history of the countries in which they find themselves. It is also the poignant and affecting tale of a man coming to terms

Retreat Without Song


Shahan Shahnour - 1929
    His peaceful routine is disrupted by Madam Jeanne and Lise. In love with the former and loved by the latter, Bedros must reconcile his Armenian background with his Parisian lifestyle.

In the Heart of the Seas


S.Y. Agnon - 1934
    It combines elements of the supernatural and mystic with the story of their physical and spiritual adventures.

All About H. Hatterr


G.V. Desani - 1948
    Hatterr is one of the most perfectly eccentric and strangely absorbing works modern English has produced. H. Hatterr is the son of a European merchant officer and a lady from Penang who has been raised and educated in missionary schools in Calcutta. His story is of his search for enlightenment as, in the course of visiting seven Oriental cities, he consults with seven sages, each of whom specializes in a different aspect of “Living.” Each teacher delivers himself of a great “Generality,” each great Generality launches a new great “Adventure,” from each of which Hatter escapes not so much greatly edified as by the skin of his teeth. The book is a comic extravaganza, but as Anthony Burgess writes in his introduction, “it is the language that makes the book. . . . It is not pure English; it is like Shakespeare, Joyce, and Kipling, gloriously impure.”

Nowhere Man


Aleksandar Hemon - 2002
    The mind- and language-bending adventures of Hemon's endearing protagonist Jozef Pronek.

Z


Vassilis Vassilikos - 1966
    The assassination of "Z," a leftist delegate to Greece's Parliament, sparks an exploration into the lives of the hired killers, bourgeois witnesses and political figures behind the killing.

Simplicissimus


Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen - 1669
    We follow him from an orphaned childhood to the casual atrocities of occupying troops, through his own soldiering adventures, and up to his final vocation as a hermit alone on an island. Mike Mitchell's superb translation allows readers to enjoy more fully one of the great masterpieces of European literature and the first German bestseller.