Most of the stories feature men who have been disappointed, somehow, by their inability to go on and fulfill the promise of their youth.Contents "Doctor Jack-o'-lantern" "The Best of Everything" "Jody Rolled The Bones" "No Pain Whatsoever" "A Glutton for Punishment" "A Wrestler with Sharks" "Fun with a Stranger" "The B.A.R. Man" "A Really Good Jazz Piano" "Out with the Old" "Builders"

    The stories in Fresh Complaint explore equally rich­­—and intriguing—territory. Ranging from the bitingly reproductive antics of “Baster” to the dreamy, moving account of a young traveler’s search for enlightenment in “Air Mail” (selected by Annie Proulx for Best American Short Stories), this collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people’s wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art founder under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in “Fresh Complaint,” a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her immigrant family lead her to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged British physicist. Narratively compelling, beautifully written, and packed with a density of ideas despite their fluid grace, these stories chart the development and maturation of a major American writer.Complainers --Air mail --Baster --Early music --Timeshare --Find the bad guy --The oracular vulva --Capricious gardens --Great experiment --Fresh complaint

    It is the 1860s; Japan is closed to foreigners and this has to be a clandestine operation. During his undercover negotiations with the local baron, Joncour's attention is arrested by the man's concubine, a girl who does not have Oriental eyes. Although the young Frenchman and the girl are unable to exchange so much as a word, love blossoms between them, conveyed by a number of recondite messages in the course of four visits the Frenchman pays to Japan. How their secret affair develops and how it unfolds is told in a narration as beautiful, smooth and seamless as a piece of the finest silk.

    . . eclectic. . . a feast' TelegraphThis landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century.Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events.This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.

    Yet, what are they? Miniature psychodramas, prose poems, tall tales, sudden illuminations, malevolent sophistries, fabliaux, paranoiac excursions, existential oxymorons, or wondrous, baleful absurdities? Always provocative, insolent, sinister, and quite often funny, these 100 comic novels are populated by decidedly ordinary lovers, martyrs, killers, thieves, maniacs, emperors, bandits, sleepers, architects, hunters, prisoners, writers, hallucinations, ghosts, spheres, dragons, Doppelgngers, knights, fairies, angels, animal incarnations, and Dreamstuff. Each "novel" construes itself into a kind of Mbius strip, in which, as one critic has noted, "time turns in a circle and bites its tail" like the Ouroborous. In any event, Centuria provides 100 uncategorizable reasons to experience and celebrate an immeasurably wonderful writer. Brilliantly translated from the Italian by Henry Martin.

    Called in to investigate, melancholy Detective Ciccio, a secret admirer of the murdered woman and a friend of her husband’s, discovers that almost everyone in the apartment building is somehow involved in the case, and with each new development the mystery only deepens and broadens. Gadda’s sublimely different detective story presents a scathing picture of fascist Italy while tracking the elusiveness of the truth, the impossibility of proof, and the infinite complexity of the workings of fate, showing how they come into conflict with the demands of justice and love. Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alberto Moravia all considered That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana to be the great modern Italian novel. Unquestionably, it is a work of universal significance and protean genius: a rich social novel, a comic opera, an act of political resistance, a blazing feat of baroque wordplay, and a haunting story of life and death in the Eternal City.

    “Over there!” he cries to his brother, Carlo, sunning beside him. “Over there!”So begins the adventure that will tear a hole in Pietro’s life. For while he and his brother struggle to save two drowning swimmers, a tragedy is unfolding down the road at his summer cottage. Instead of coming home to a hero’s welcome, Pietro is greeted by the flashing lights of an ambulance, the wide-eyed stare of his young daughter, Claudia, and the terrible news that his fiancée, Lara, is dead.Life must go on. Or does it? Pietro, a true iconoclast, has to find his own way. When he drops Claudia off for the first day of school, he decides to wait outside for her all day, and then every day. To protect her. To protect himself. To wait for the heavy fist of grief to strike. But as the days and weeks go by, the small parking lot in front of the school becomes his refuge from the world as well as the place where family and colleagues come to relieve their own suffering—among them, the woman he rescued from the waves. And Pietro plunges deeper into the depths of his life before seeing the simple truth before his eyes.Sandro Veronesi makes art of every detail, creating a mosaic of humor, hope,profound insight, and emotional resonance. Quiet Chaos is an unprecedented portrayal of a life set adrift by death.

    Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing. As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy.In this fascinating, lyrical tale, Umberto Eco tells of a young dreamer searching for love and meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps, has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and the Flood.

    Leda, a middle-aged divorcée, is alone for the first time in years after her two adult daughters leave home to live with their father in Toronto. Enjoying an unexpected sense of liberty, she heads to the Ionian coast for a vacation. But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.

    In each town he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments: Kafka and Freud; Wittgenstein and Marcus Aurelius; Lukcs, Heidegger, and Cline; Canetti and Ovid. He also encounters a host of more obscure but no less intriguing personalities--philosophers, novelists, diplomats, and patriots--on an odyssey that brings middle-European culture to life in its most picturesque and evocative forms.Danube is among the first of a new list of nonfiction paperbacks published as Harvill Press Editions.

    The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women who are seeking to escape the ravages of the plague. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in these vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots that revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions.Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam

    Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Perfectly paced and brimming with passion, these twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the Twentieth Century are translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell.Deluxe, clothbound edition.

    Icky" "Jemina"

    Each of the portraits in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace. These are stories of desperation and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both stark and magnificent.The half-skinned steer --The mud below --55 miles to the gas pump --The bunchgrass edge of the world --A lonely coast --Job history --Pair a spurs --People in Hell just want a drink of water --The governors of Wyoming --The blood bay --Brokeback Mountain

    The renowned classicist, translator, and critic William Arrowsmith translated all three volumes."Virtually incomparable. . . . Arrowsmith has quite literally distilled this poetry's essence in order to recompose it with all of its colors, scents, and exquisitely understated potency intact." — Rebecca West