They all have one person in common, their beloved therapist Natasha who, though central to the lives of all of the women, is absent from their meeting. The women represent the many cultural and social groups that modern Chile is comprised of—from a housekeeper to celebrity television personality. They are of disparate ages and races and their lives have been touched by major political events from the dictatorship of Pinochet to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But despite their differences, as the women tell their stories, unlikely bonds are formed, and their lives are transformed in this intricately woven, beautifully rendered tale of the universal bonds between women from one of Latin America’s most celebrated novelists.

    The dream-like, open-ended tales by the father of Japanese modernist literature offer thought-provoking reflections on fear, death, and loneliness. Their settings range from the Meiji period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the era in which the tales were written, to the prehistoric Age of the Gods; the twelfth-century Kamakura period, in which the samurai class emerged; and the remote future.A scholar of British literature, author Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was also a composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. The stories of Ten Nights Dreaming, which were originally published as a newspaper serial, constitute milestones of Japanese fantasy. Like Sōseki's other writings, they have had a profound effect on readers, writers, and filmmakers. This edition features an expert new English translation by Matt Treyvaud, who has translated the story "The Cat's Grave" for this work as well.

    Our hero tells of his childhood: his passion for hunting, his love of the wild landscape of Romania, his ridiculous social snobbery. He leads us through his youth, and between fantastic and colourful stories of Bucharest in the late twenties and early thirties, he dissects his own complicated, at times agonizing, development as a moral creature. We are with him as the Nazis take over Austria; as his own anti-semitism - already such a mixture of belief, caprice, and compromise - is shaken to its core. And later on we meet him as a much older man, one haunted by his own protean character, by the beautiful but tragic web of memories and events that together form his history, and by the greatest love of his life, a beautiful Jewess.

    These stories all display the elegance and clarity of Turgenev's finest writing.

    It is eagerly anticipated, as Granta's previous Best Young Novelist issues have been startlingly accurate, calling out the work of writers from Salman Rushdie to Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith.Here, for the first time in translation, we predict the literary stars of the future. CONTENTS7 ForewordAurelio MajorValerie Miles11 Cohiba Lucia Puenzo (translated by Valerie Miles)29 Stars and Stripes Santiago Roncagliolo (translated by Edith Grossman)41 After Effects Oliverio Coelho (translated by Anne McLean)51 The Coming FloodAndres Barba(translated by Lisa Dillman)65 The Place of Losses Rodrigo Hasbun (translated by Carolina De Robertis)81 Conditions for the RevolutionPola Oloixarac(translated by Mara Faye Lethem)99 The Hotel Life Javier Montes (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)115 Gigantomachy Pablo Guitierrez (translated by Anna Kushner)123 After Helena Andres Neuman (translated by Richard Gwyn)135 Eva and Diego Alberto Olmos (translated by Peter Bush)147 The Survivor Sonia Hernandez (translated by Samantha Schnee)157 Scenes from a Comfortable Life Andres Ressia Colino (translated by Katherine Silver)169 Seltz Carlos Yushimito (translated by Alfred Mac Adam)187 The Girls Resembled Each Other in the Unfathomable Carlos Labbe (translated by Natasha Wimmer)195 In Utah There Are Mountains Too Federico Falco (translated by Alfred Mac Adam)217 Small Mouth, Thin Lips Antonio Ortuno (translated by Tanya Huntington Hyde)233 Gerardo’s Letters Elvira Navarro (translated by Natasha Wimmer)243 The Bonfire and the Chessboard Matias Nespolo (translated by Frank Wynne)263 The Cuervo Brothers Andres Felipe Solano (translated by Nick Caistor)273 Olingiris Samanta Schweblin (translated by Daniel Alarcon)287 Ways of Going Home Alejandro Zambra (translated by Megan McDowell)301 A Few Words on the Life Cycle of Frogs Patricio Pron (translated by Janet Hendrickson)321 Notes on translators

    Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone—even the other patients—into sleeping with her.Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile—a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers—as well as an examination of madness.Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.

    Thus John Nordholm, the alternately shy and brash hero of the first story here, is also the narrator of the last. Yet there is a sense in which all sixteen of these stories knock at the same door, a door that in “Dentistry and Doubt” swings open, and in “Toward Evening” remains shut. The characters are polite, nervous, diffident, as if life—or at least youth, for they are all young—were a discomfiting wait in the anteroom of the absolute. The majority of these stories depict encounters between strangers and their unexpected effects, which can be as concrete as a roomful of flowers or a bottle of wine, or as intangible as a miracle or a dream.

    Suddenly left abandoned and penniless in Morocco by her lover, Sira Quiroga forges a new identity. Against all odds she becomes the most sought-after couture designer for the socialite wives of German Nazi officers. But she is soon embroiled in a dangerous political conspiracy as she passes information to the British Secret Service through a code stitched into the hems of her dresses.

    But it is also Sjón's most realistic, accessible, and heartfelt work yet. It is the story of a young man on the fringes of a society that is itself at the fringes of the world--at what seems like history's most tumultuous, perhaps ultimate moment.Máni Steinn is queer in a society in which the idea of homosexuality is beyond the furthest extreme. His city, Reykjavik in 1918, is homogeneous and isolated and seems entirely defenseless against the Spanish flu, which has already torn through Europe, Asia, and North America and is now lapping up on Iceland's shores. And if the flu doesn't do it, there's always the threat that war will spread all the way north. And yet the outside world has also brought Icelanders cinema! And there's nothing like a dark, silent room with a film from Europe flickering on the screen to help you escape from the overwhelming threats--and adventures--of the night, to transport you, to make you feel like everything is going to be all right. For Máni Steinn, the question is whether, at Reykjavik's darkest hour, he should retreat all the way into this imaginary world, or if he should engage with the society that has so soundly rejected him.

    Henry Prize stories collection has offered an exciting selection of the best stories published in hundreds of literary magazines every year. Such classic works of American literature as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1927); William Faulkner’s Barn Burning (1939); Carson McCuller’s A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (1943); Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (1949); J.D. Salinger’s For Esme with Love and Squalor (1963); John Cheever’s The Country Husband (1956) ; and Flannery O’Conner’s Everything that Rises Must Converge (1963) all were O. Henry Prize stories. An accomplished new series editor--novelist and short story writer Laura Furman--has read more than a thousand stories to identify the 20 winners, each one a pleasure to read today, each one a potential classic. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 also contains brief essays from each of the three distinguished judges on their favorite story, and comments from the prize-winning writers on what inspired their stories. There is nothing like the ever rich, surprising, and original O. Henry collection for enjoying the contemporary short story.The Thing in the Forest A. S. Byatt The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr Burn Your Maps Robyn Jay Leff Lush Bradford Morrow God’s Goodness Marjorie Kemper Bleed Blue in Indonesia Adam Desnoyers The Story Edith Pearlman Swept Away T. Coraghessan Boyle Meanwhile Ann Harleman Three Days. A Month. More. Douglas Light The High Road Joan Silber Election Eve Evan S. Connell Irish Girl Tim Johnston What Went Wrong Tim O’Brien The American Embassy Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Kissing William Kittredge Sacred Statues William Trevor Two Words Molly Giles Fathers Alice Munro Train Dreams Denis Johnson

    Rose, bestselling author) The Map of Time crafts an enchanting collection of twelve evocative and macabre stories delving into the magical, ordinary, and darker aspects of love in all its powerful forms.A young girl receives letters from her lost doll; a cat madly in love with her human neighbor; a bored office worker escapes his monotonous life by traveling on his grandfather’s model train; a man gives all of himself to the woman he loves, piece by piece. These are just a few of the unforgettable characters that inhabit Félix J. Palma’s gorgeously wrought short story collection, by turns mesmerizing, morbid, and melancholy. This collection contains selections from three previously published anthologies, bringing together in one volume some of Palma’s most celebrated stories. Available for the first time in English and with his signature “lyrical storytelling and a rich attention to detail” (Library Journal), The Heart and Other Viscera explores the wonder, madness, and heartbreak of love, and the lengths to which some are willing to go to protect, honor, and cherish the ones they love.

    Jobless and ashamed, he takes them into a stranger’s house, a place that will become the site of the greatest humiliation of his life. In an impoverished fishing town, four teenage boys try to allay their boredom during an endless summer by translating lyrics from the Smiths into Spanish using a stolen dictionary. Their dreams of fame and glory twist into a plan to steal musical instruments from a church, an obsession that prevents one of them from anticipating a devastating ending. Meanwhile a young woman goes home with a charismatic man after finding his daughter wandering lost in a public place. She soon discovers, like so many characters in this book, that fortuitous encounters can be deceptions in disguise.Themes of pride, shame, and disgrace—small and large, personal and public—tie the stories in this collection together. Humiliation becomes revelation as we watch Paulina Flores’s characters move from an age of innocence into a world of conflicting sensations.

    Two feuding crime families with blood on their hands need our hard-boiled hero, The Redeemer, to broker peace. Both his instincts and the vacant streets warn him to stay indoors, but The Redeemer ventures out into the city’s underbelly to arrange for the exchange of the bodies they hold hostage.Yuri Herrera’s novel is a response to the violence of contemporary Mexico. With echoes of Romeo and Juliet, Roberto Bolaño and Raymond Chandler, The Transmigration of Bodies is a noirish tragedy and a tribute to those bodies – loved, sanctified, lusted after, and defiled – that violent crime has touched.

    This roll call extends the ridiculous to melancholic extremes, introducing us to such exemplary fools as the father and husband unable to recognize his own family, the Marxist convinced that Christ was an extraterrestrial, the would-be saint who finds a private martyrdom through the torturous confinement of a pair of ill-fitting leather oxfords, and the man who failed to realize that he had spent two years in a concentration camp. This is a display of a myriad idiocy, blissful and baneful, discovered and achieved by hook or by crook, be it through paranoia, misapplied methodology, religious hallucination, or relentless diarrhea. But Cavazzoni engages in neither finger pointing nor celebration. If Saints can be counted, idiots cannot: idiocy is ultimately the human condition.

    When a well-known bibliophile is found dead, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named for a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris on the killer's trail in this twisty intellectual romp through the book world