Project for a Revolution in New York


Alain Robbe-Grillet - 1970
    Set in the towers and tunnels of the quintessential American city, Alain Robbe-Grillet's novel turns this urban space into a maze where politics bleeds into perversion, revolution into sadism, activist into criminal, vice into art—and back again. Following the logic of a movie half-glimpsed through a haze of drugs and alcohol, Project for a Revolution in New York is a Sadean reverie that bears an alarming resemblance to the New York, and the United States, that have actually come into being.

The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert


Jaroslav Seifert - 1984
    The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving, comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection “the tangible expression of the nation’s genius.”

Collected Stories of John O'Hara


John O'Hara - 1984
    American LiteratureContains:The doctor's son -- It must have been spring -- Over the river and through the wood -- Price's always open -- Are we leaving tomorrow? -- Pal Joey -- The gentleman in the tan suit -- Good-bye, Herman -- Olive -- Do you like it here? -- Now we know -- Free -- Too young -- Bread alone -- Graven image -- Common sense should tell you -- Drawing room B -- The pretty daughters - The moccasins -- Imagine kissing Pete -- The girl from California -- In the silence -- Exactly eight thousand dollars exactly -- Winter dance -- The flatted saxophone -- The friends of Miss Julia -- How can I tell you? -- Ninety minutes away -- Our friend the sea -- Can I stay here? -- The hardware man -- The pig -- Zero -- Fatimas and kisses -- Natica Jackson -- We'll have fun.

The Forest


Aleksandr Ostrovsky - 1859
    It was premiered in Saint Petersburg’s Alexandrinsky Theatre on November 1, 1871, as a benefice for actor Fyodor Burdin.

Nineteen Ghost Stories of M.R. James to Keep You Up at Night: 3 Volumes


M.R. James - 2009
    R. James is best remembered for his ghost stories which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature. One of James' most important achievements was to redefine the ghost story for the new century by dispensing with many of the formal gothic trappings of his predecessors, and replacing them with more realistic contemporary settings.According to James, a story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself: 'If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'"

Garcia Marquez: Los Funerales de la Mama Grande


Robin W. Fiddian - 1995
    His highly-acclaimed work includes One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his literary production prior to Chronicle of a Death Foretold. A principal exponent of 'magical realism', his work forms a significant part of the debate about postmodernist writing, and the study of fantasy as a genre. Dr. Fiddian's detailed and accessible Introduction places Marquez's work in the contexts of national, regional (Caribbean) and continental (Latin American) writing and develops a coherent overview of the author's literary output. The essays selected for inclusion in this collection bring together some of the most up-to-date and authoritative assessments of Marquez's writing, from early stories and novellas, through the major novels, up to Love in the Time of Cholera. Featuring a variety of critical approaches, this fascinating study provides the first annotated anthology of criticism in English.

Selected Satires of Lucian


Lucian of Samosata - 1968
    He took up law, left it for public speaking, then turned to full-time writing, producing the wide range of subject matter and literary form which is represented in this collection.A master of the vivid scene, Lucian used his pungent style to ridicule the tyrants, prophets, waning gods, and hypocrite philosophers of his own day and the centuries preceding him. His most typical genre is a parody of a Platonic dialogue, but he also excelled in straight narrative, as in the elaborate spoof "A True Story" and the old folk tale outrageously retold, "Lucius, the Ass." His skeptical mind and imaginative irony have influenced generations of artists and writers, and now in Professor Casson's new translations can be freshly enjoyed today.

The Old Man of the Moon


Shěn Fù - 1809
    Will the Old Man understand and help us once again?' The Old Man of the Moon is Shen Fu's intimate and moving account of his marriage - from early passion to the trials of poverty and separation - and his great, enduring love for his wife in eighteenth-century China.

The Listeners and Other Poems


Walter de la Mare - 2007
    Included are "The Dark Chateau," "The Witch," "The Ghost," and more.

Here


Wisława Szymborska - 2009
    When Here was published in Poland, reviewers marveled, “How is it that she keeps getting better?” These twenty-seven poems, as rendered by prize-winning translators Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, are among her greatest work. Whether writing about her teenage self, microscopic creatures, or the upsides to living on Earth, she remains a virtuoso of form, line, and thought. From the title poem: I can’t speak for elsewhere, but here on Earth we’ve got a fair supply of everything. Here we manufacture chairs and sorrows, scissors, tenderness, transistors, violins, teacups, dams, and quips . . . Like nowhere else, or almost nowhere, you’re given your own torso here, equipped with the accessories required for adding your own children to the rest. Not to mention arms, legs, and astonished head.

Killing the Second Dog


Marek Hłasko - 1965
    In this gripping novel, Robert and Jacob are two down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1950s. They plan to run a scam on an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, exiled from their native land and adrift in the hot, nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the woman, who has enough trouble with her young son to keep her occupied all day. Her heart is open though, and the men are hoping her wallet is too. What follows is a story of love, deception, cruelty and shame, as Jacob pretends to fall in love with the American. But it's not just Jacob performing a role: nearly all the characters are actors in an ugly story, complete with parts for murder and suicide. Hlasko's writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue, in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.

Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems: Parallel Text edition


César Vallejo - 1974
    Challenging, intense, and difficult to translate, Vallejo's work has often been overshadowed by his fervent endorsement of communism. Noted scholar Ilan Stavans tackles the avant- garde poet's politics head-on in an enlightening new introduction that places Vallejo in his proper literary context, while Margaret Sayers Peden's new translation does full justice to Vallejo's complex literary style. Including Spanish and English versions of more than eighty poems that span the arc of his career, this volume is certain to become the leading collection of Vallejo's work for years to come.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke


Theodore Roethke - 2006
    Within these notebooks, Roethke allowed his mind to rove freely, moment by moment, moving from the practical to the transcendental, from the halting to the sublime.Fellow poet and colleague David Wagoner distilled these notebooks—twelve linear feet of bookshelf—into an energetic, wise, and rollicking collection that shows Roethke to be one of the truly phenomenal creative sources in American poetry.From “A Psychic Janitor”: I’m sick of fumbling, furtive, disorganized minds like bad lawyers trying to make too many points that this is an age of criticism: and these, mind you, tin-eared punks who couldn’t tell a poem from an old boot if a gun were put to their heads . . .Cover art by United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.

The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians


Ambrose Bierce - 2012
    A collection of 26 stories:Soldiers (15 stories)"A Horseman in the Sky""An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge""Chickamauga""A Son of the Gods""One of the Missing""Killed at Resaca""The Affair at Coulter's Notch""The Coup de Grâce""Parker Adderson, Philosopher""An Affair of Outposts""The Story of a Conscience""One Kind of Officer""One Officer, One Man""George Thurston""The Mocking-Bird"Civilians (11 stories)"The Man Out of the Nose""An Adventure at Brownville""The Famous Gilson Bequest""The Applicant""A Watcher by the Dead""The Man and the Snake""A Holy Terror""The Suitable Surroundings""The Boarded Window""An Heiress from Redhorse""The Eyes of the Panther"

Aepyornis Island


H.G. Wells - 1894
    Born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, he grew up in the rural community of Hazel Grove. Wells attended high school in Ottawa, Ontario and university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As an undergraduate, he spent summers working in Iqaluit, Nunavut as an airline cargo handler. After a brief stint at graduate school in Montreal, Quebec, he returned to Iqaluit in 2001 and later that year transferred to the remote settlement of Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, where he worked until 2003, when he moved to Halifax with his wife, Rachel Lebowitz. At this point he started contributing book reviews and essays on Canadian poetry to periodicals including Books in Canada, Quill & Quire and Maisonneuve. In the spring of 2004, his first chapbook of poems, Fool's Errand, appeared. In the fall of that year, Toronto's Insomniac Press published his full-length collection of Arctic poems, Unsettled, under Paul Vermeersch's 4 AM Books imprint. In 2004, Wells started working for Via Rail Canada as a service attendant. In 2006 he became the Reviews Editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. In 2007, after moving to Vancouver, he published Sealift, a CD recording of 24 poems from Unsettled; "Achromatope," a letterpress broadside; and After the Blizzard, a limited edition chapbook. In the spring of 2008, Jailbreaks, his anthology of Canadian sonnets, was published. Anything But Hank!, the children's book he co-wrote with Lebowitz, with illustrations by Eric Orchard, was published in the fall. In 2009, after moving back to Halifax, Wells published Track & Trace, his second trade collection of poems, with illustrations by renowned graphic artist Seth. Track & Trace was shortlisted for the 2010 Atlantic Poetry Prize. In 2010, he published The Essential Kenneth Leslie, the first collection of Leslie's poems to be published since 1972.