His extravagant and hopeless undertakings, his brushes with the law and scrapes with death, and his enduring friendships and unlooked-for love affairs make him a Don Quixote for our day, driven from one place to another by a restless and irregular quest for the absolute. Álvaro Mutis's seven dazzling chronicles of the adventures and misadventures of Maqroll have won him numerous honors and a passionately devoted readership throughout the world. Here for the first time in English all these wonderful stories appear in a single volume in Edith Grossman's prize-winning translation.

    A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández’s mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man’s face on the magazine’s cover with the words “I Tortured People.” His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian. Like a secret service agent from the future, through extraordinary feats of the imagination, Fernández follows the “man who tortured people” to places that archives can’t reach, into the sinister twilight zone of history where morning routines, a game of chess, Yuri Gagarin, and the eponymous TV show of the novel’s title coexist with the brutal yet commonplace machinations of the regime.How do crimes vanish in plain sight? How does one resist a repressive regime? And who gets to shape the truths we live by and take for granted? The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.

    Set in Hillbrow during the tumultuous years of apartheid’s demise, the rapid changes taking place both in the neighbourhood and the country are charted by staid, conservative Aubrey Tearle, a retired proofreader whose life has been devoted to reading telephone directories. Obsessed with what he terms ‘corrigenda’––mistakes that crop up with increasing frequency as ‘standards decline’––he embarks on a grandiose plan to enlighten his fellow–citizens, with disastrous, hilarious and poignant results.Demonstrating a Cervantes–like knack for creating innocents who tilt at windmills, Vladislavić continues to demonstrate the dazzling and unique talent seen in his previous writings as he explores the age–old theme of how individuals respond when ‘things fall apart’––and what can occur when language itself is in a state of flux. This highly original novel reflects post–apartheid, post–modern writing at its best.

    In the north woods of Wisconsin following a forest fire that destroys their town in 1871, 17-year-old Mary James forms a new respect for her older sister.

    I don't go to work. I don't have an office. I stay at home, hide behind curtains and make notes. I wait for something to happen.'Gordon Kingdom struggles with the fate of his seriously-ill wife while patiently observing and methodically recording the lives of those around him: his neighbours.He has files on them all, including:-Don Donald (best friend and petty thief)-Annie Carnaffan (lives next door, throws footballs over the fence)-Benny (the boy who paints with his eyes closed).And then there's Angelica, the new girl (42) on the street, with her multi-coloured toenails and her filthy temper. It's when she arrives that Gordon's world of half-truths really begins to unravel. Faced with a series of unexpected events and a faltering conscience, he's left with an impossible decision. Because in the banality of everyday life, what would you do if the unthinkable happened?

    from Cuba. Filled with puns, wordplay, lists upon lists, and Sternean typography--such as the section entitled "Some Revelations," which consists of several blank pages--this novel has been praised as a more modern, sexier, funnier, Cuban Ulysses. Centering on the recollections of a man separated from both his country and his youth, Cabrera Infante creates an enchanting vision of life and the many colorful characters found in steamy Havana's pre-Castro cabaret society.

    Suddenly, no amount of cocktails can cure the stress that simultaneously unsettles their lives. Nandi’s final wedding arrangements are nearly in place so why is she feeling on edge? Zaza, the “trophy wife”, waits for the day her affair comes to light and her husband gives her a one-way ticket back to the township. Tumi has only one wish to complete her perfect life – a child. But when her wish is granted, it’s not exactly how she pictured it. And Princess? For the first time ever, she has fallen in love – with Leo, a painter who seems to press all the right buttons. But soon she discovers – like her friends already have – that life is not a bed of roses, and happiness never comes with a manual . . .

    Boldly erotic and hauntingly elegiac, comic and romantic, this brilliant reconception of the classic expatriate novels of the Lost Generation confirms Dyer as one of our most original and talented writers.

    A Lincolnshire village on a glorious summer's morning in 1940, the countryside as still as a painting. In the blue sky above, the fate of the whole war will soon rest with the RAF and their desperate effort to win the Battle of Britain. If they fail, Hitler's next step will be invasion. And as the scene comes to life before us over the next six months, this shadow of war will not disappear - the conflict will take husbands and sons away, bring in evacuees from the city and soldiers to defend the coast. There will be more money from war work, but less to spend it on - legitimately at least. Everywhere, the feeling of change is in the air. From the pub to the church, the humblest cottage to the biggest farm, from a struggling single mother to the lady of the manor, the paper boy to a traumatised bomb disposal volunteer, this superb jewel of a novel portrays a community of people and weaves together their stories with passion, betrayal, intrigue and suspense.

    But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.

    Miranda is faced with a tragedy: his father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has only a few weeks to live. He is also faced with a dilemma: How does one tell his father he is dying?Ernesto Duran, a patient of Dr. Miranda’s, is convinced he is sick. Ever since he separated from his wife he has been presenting symptoms of an illness he believes is killing him. It becomes an obsession far exceeding hypochondria. The fixation, in turn, has its own creeping effect on Miranda’s secretary, who cannot, despite her best intentions, resist compassion for the man.A profound and philosophical exploration of the nature and meaning of illness, Alberto Barrera Tyszka’s tender, refined novel interweaves the stories of four individuals as they try, in their own way, to come to terms with sickness in all its ubiquity.

    Vincent and his generation are contrasted with an older generation of retired teachers and petty crooks, and both generations come under the bemused gaze of the waiter Alfred, whose infallible method of predicting the future mocks prevailing scientific models. Similarly, Queneau's literary universe operates under its own laws, joining rigorous artistry with a warm evocation of the last days of a bygone era.

    After accidentally overhearing her so-called best friend verbally destroy her, Briana feels as if her world has fallen apart. Then she meets Jill and Miquelle and the three girls soon become inseparable. Join the girls as their friendship is put to the test through prejudices and misconceptions, a food fight, a car crash, missionary work, disastrous homecoming dates, crushes, first kisses, and everything else that comes with true friendship.

    Set against a backdrop of an Arizona influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the westward expansion of the United States, the story is a bravura performance by the 1989 Nobel Prize-winning author. A monologue by the naive, unreliable, and uneducated Wendell L. Espana, the book weaves together hundreds of characters and a torrent of interconnected anecdotes, some true, some fabricated. Wendell s story is a document of the vast array of ills that welcomed the dawning of the twentieth century, ills that continue to shape our world in the new millennium."

    They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality seem to be dissolving: all forms of life capriciously evolve, strange creatures begin to appear… After a while—it could be weeks or years—the workers don’t even have the ability to ask themselves: where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin?Told in three alternating first-person narratives, The Factory casts a vivid—if sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of modern life. With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, Hiroko Oyamada is one of the boldest writers of her generation.