Following through on his promise at the conclusion of his famed work, Helping Verbs of the Heart, Esterhazy touches on all aspects of life and philosophy relevant to readers today, in an extraordinary novel that centers on a mother’s relationship to her son and the game of football. Powerful and original, Not Art is a major contribution from one of Europe’s most significant writers and perennial contender for the Nobel Prize.

    Her debut work of fiction, what purpose did i serve in your life, examines the nature of sex and the possibility of real connection in the face of degradation and blankness. Its interlocking stories follow a chronological arc from innocence to sexual experience, taking in the humiliations of one night stands with male strangers, the perils of sex work, and the caustic reception that greets a woman working and writing in public. It is a brave and pitiless examination of yearning in an era of hyper-exposure and a riveting account of the moments of transcendence seized from an otherwise blank world."Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she's masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure." -Edmund WhiteI have never read a book like this before. It’s painful, shocking, and compellingly written, composed with great sensitivity to which details should be revealed and which must stay concealed. Its genre-muddle and formal complexity make for a completely unforgettable, profoundly contemporary, and plainly great work of courage and art. Here’s a terrifying proposal: could this be The Great American Novel for the twilight of �'Great' America?" - Sheila Heti (author of "How Should a Person Be?")"'�This society hates feelings,' Kathy Acker said about a million times. A chain of regulation controls us by making us fear that we will be expelled from the human club for being the wrong kind of person. Marie Calloway breaks that chain of regulation by displaying her body like a beggar displays her wounds, by asserting awkwardness and shame (for the body, for ambition). Her book should be called, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman Who Can’t Be Controlled. Or is she the fiction, Holden Caulfield, Lolita, or Mme. Merteuil? How does a questing intelligence live inside the commodity?—searching for identity or personal branding? And if she is an attention whore, am I the attention john? Yes--but Calloway wonders as strongly as I do about what she might be, and she invites misunderstanding into her work. One thing is certain, though—She can really write about sex!" - Robert Glück"what purpose did i serve in your life is moving, unprecedented, threatening, and surreal—the exciting, rare work of someone with nothing to lose. It's intuitive and overpowering, concise and extreme. And, like a plant or a comet, it doesn't pause to explain what it's doing, defend or rationalize its existence, or attempt to obscure or distort its intentions. If you're attentive toward it—and earnest and open-minded and non-malicious in your attention—you will likely question and examine what you yourself are doing and why, and how to change." — Tao Lin"'Adrien Brody' is riveting, fresh, and written with a distinctive new voice." — Stephen Elliott"That's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.""What is?" I asked, though I knew."Your face right now."I was vaguely aware my eyes were open very wide.Marie Calloway's fiction debut, what purpose did i serve in your life, is both a portrait of American youth and a gamble, a chance taken, in answer to the following: for a young woman, is there such a thing as the soul, a life more than the organs, or is she forever recalled to her body? Marie does not answer this question but instead acts it out through a series of intertwined stories. The result is a fusillade of brutally self-aware and insightful pieces that take on the meaning of sex, art, and, most of all, survival in the age of Internet-based sex work and love that can flame and turn to ash in the space of a tweet.Marie Calloway (b. 1990) is interested in sexuality and gender. She rose to prominence in 2011 with her controversial story, "Adrien Brody," which was published by Muumuu House.

    Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthralls with its lively gossip, witty observations, and subtle impressions. Lady Shonagon was an erstwhile rival of Lady Murasaki, whose novel, "The Tale of Genji," fictionalized the elite world Lady Shonagon so eloquently relates. Featuring reflections on royal and religious ceremonies, nature, conversation, poetry, and many other subjects, "The Pillow Book" is an intimate look at the experiences and outlook of the Heian upper class, further enriched by Ivan Morris's extensive notes and critical contextualization.

    Demonstrating that language and intimacy are as much barriers between human beings as ways of connecting them, Andrej Blatnik here provides us with a guided tour of the slips, misunderstandings, and blind alleys we each manage to fall foul of on a daily basis—no closer to understanding the motives of our families, friends, lovers, or coworkers than we are those of a complete stranger . . . or, indeed, our own.

    The men in these tales frequently linger at the edges — their longings and failures exerting a subterranean pull on the women in their lives. In ‘The Secret Lives of Men’, a woman revisits her hometown and learns a long-held secret about her first boyfriend. In ‘The Bad Dog Park’, a man’s devotion to his pet ultimately forces him to confront his true hopes and fears. And in ‘The Other Side of the River’, a snap decision has devastating consequences for a mother and her family. Written in Blain’s trademark unadorned yet powerful prose, these stories resonate long after they are finished.The Secret Lives of Men is an exceptional collection by one of Australia’s leading writers.

    Over 60,000 sold in small format. The Clothes They Stood Up In, has sold over 200,000 copies as a small novella and was 14 weeks in the Bestseller lists. It is the painful story of what happens to an elderly couple when their flat is stripped completely bare. The Laying on of Hands, a memorial service for a masseur to the famous that goes horribly wrong. Over 100,000 copies sold as a novella. Like everything Alan Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. And they all have a brilliant and surprising twist; are immensely funny and profoundly moral.

    Through monologues, emails, and text exchanges, she brilliantly weaves together the coming of age of five distinct characters: a woman who’s “gone off sausage” (men); her brother, in a secret affair with a powerful married man; a lesbian couple confronting an important transition; and the troubled young woman who forces them all to face their fears. With vibrant imagery and daring prose, Korneliussen writes honestly about finding yourself and growing into the person you were meant to be. Praised for creating “its own genre” (Politiken, Denmark), Last Night in Nuuk is a brave entrance onto the literary scene and establishes her as a voice that cannot be ignored.

    Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he applies for permission to migrate to West Germany. Herta Müller (Herta Mueller) describes with poetic attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain. In sparse, poetic language, Muller captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people.

    Ireland's most acclaimed satirist is back with a second collection of short stories to provoke, unsettle and illuminate.Roving through the centuries, from the barren fields of the Famine-struck West to the hyperreal adscape of our technocratic present, the second collection of short stories from Blindboy Boatclub is a wild and exhilarating hike along the knotted paths of the Irish subconscious.From the time-travelling effects of tweed suits, to a vengeful farmer who hypnotises old people into believing they're cows after his farm is turned into a nursing home, these stories are characteristically surreal, yet littered with moments of profound insight and quiet devastation.

    A South American president revisits the scenes of his ruthless rise to power-shortly after his own funeral. A transformed and sparkling city of London sets the scene for a company chairman's nemesis at the hands of his wife. In Andalucia, the spirit of the "duende" inspires an elderly widow to dance a death-defying flamenco. We meet splendacious Mrs. da Silva, sixty-five year old matriarch of Rebel War Band, as she boogies at a carnival. The ghost of Dante's Virgil, leading his pilgrim along perilous paths, is brought to mind as one friend guides another on her final journey.

    When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the its founding to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the man who causes international tension when he dies straddling the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia.Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place--no matter how humble--is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one's self and one's dreams but also with all of the universe.Richly imagined, weaving anecdote with recipes and gossip, Tokarczuk's novel is an epic of a small place. Since its publication in 1998 it has remained a bestseller in Poland. House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe's best young writers.

    Three decades later, Janie has relocated to Montreal, although the scars of her past remain visible. After abandoning her husband and son and taking refuge in the home of her friend, the scientist Hiroji Matsui, Janie and Hiroji find solace in their shared grief and pain—until Hiroji’s disappearance opens old wounds and Janie finds that she must struggle to find grace in a world overshadowed by the sorrows of her past.Beautifully realized, deeply affecting, Dogs at the Perimeter evokes the injustice of tyranny through the eyes of a young girl and draws a remarkable map of the mind’s battle with memory, loss, and the horrors of war. It confirms Madeleine Thien as one of the most gifted and powerful novelists writing today.

    Structured as an index, the work is a collage of excerpted conversations, letters, quotations, moments, and dreams. An exploration of longing and desire, the story follows a moment of crisis in a marriage and in the life of a woman who remains haunted by an unassimilable past. Allan Gurganus called an early version of the work a "thoroughly engrossing almanac of desire" when it was published by The Iowa Review.

    The subject seems inoffensive enough: the life of a German Jewish woman (a close family friend) who arrived in Colombia shortly before the Second World War. So why does his father attack him so viciously? Do the pages of his book unwittingly hide some dangerous secret? As Gabriel sets out to discover what lies behind his father's anger, he finds himself undertaking an examination of the duplicity, guilt and obsession at the heart of Colombian society in World War II, when the introduction of blacklists of German immigrants corrupted and destroyed many lives. Half a century later, in a gripping narrative that unpacks like a set of Russian dolls, one treacherous act perpetrated in those dark days returns with a vengeance, leading the reader towards a literal, moral and metaphorical cliff edge. With a tightly honed plot, deftly crafted situations, and a cast of complex and varied characters, The Informers is a fascinating novel of callous betrayal, complicit secrecy and the long quest for redemption in a secular, cynical world. It heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.(front flap)

    Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie? Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand—where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father’s cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend’s father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television. In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.