The Treasure Of Nugget Mountain


Karl May - 2004
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Water Music


T. Coraghessan Boyle - 1981
    Boyle's riotous first novel, now in a new edition for its 25th anniversary Twenty five years ago, T.C. Boyle published his first novel, Water Music, a funny, bawdy, extremely entertaining novel of imaginative and stylistic fancy that announced to the world Boyle's tremendous gifts as a storyteller. Set in the late eighteenth century, Water Music follows the wild adventures of Ned Rise, thief and whoremaster, and Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, through London's seamy gutters and Scotland's scenic highlands to their grand meeting in the heart of darkest Africa. There they join forces and wend their hilarious way to the source of the Niger.

The Devil's Elixirs


E.T.A. Hoffmann - 1815
    As he travels towards Rome he wrestles with the enigma of his own identity while pursued by his murderous doppelganger. The monk's only hope for salvation lies with the beautiful Aurelie; but in order to escape the curse which lies over his family, he must evade the sinister powers of the living and the dead. In this lively and disturbing gothic tale, Hoffmann combines elements of the fantastic and the sublime to analyse the seductive ambiguities of art and the deeply divided nature of the human imagination.

Mrs Sartoris


Elke Schmitter - 2000
    After being jilted by a rich boyfriend, Margaret, eighteen and heartbroken, throws herself into a comfortable but stifling marriage to Ernst, a war veteran with a penchant for routine and order, who still lives with his mother in a small German village.It's not a bad life, considering Margaret's psychological scars, but neither Ernst's adoration nor the birth of a daughter can reawaken her frozen emotions. Until she slides into an affair with a married man with whom she plans to run away. Her plan is a fantasy that cannot possibly come true. Its repercussions nevertheless will explode with unimaginable force in these astonished lives.

The Waste Books


Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - 1806
    He is most celebrated, however, for the casual notes and aphorisms that he collected in what he called his Waste Books. With unflagging intelligence and encyclopedic curiosity, Lichtenberg wittily deflates the pretensions of learning and society, examines a range of philosophical questions, and tracks his own thoughts down hidden pathways to disconcerting and sometimes hilarious conclusions.Lichtenberg's Waste Books have been greatly admired by writers as very different as Tolstoy, Einstein, and Andre Breton, while Nietzsche and Wittgenstein acknowledged them as a significant inspiration for their own radical work in philosophy. The record of a brilliant and subtle mind in action, The Waste Books are above all a powerful testament to the necessity, and pleasure, of unfettered thought.

The Hundred Days


Joseph Roth - 1936
    This particularly poignant work, set in the first half of 1815 and largely in Paris, is told from two perspectives, that of Napoleon himself and that of the lowly, devoted palace laundress Angelica—an unlucky creature who deeply loves him. In The Hundred Days, Roth refracts the deep sorrow of their intertwined fates.Roth's signature lyrical elegance and haunting atmospheric details sing in The Hundred Days. "There may be," as James Wood has stated, "no modern writer more able to combine the novelistic and the poetic, to blend lusty, undamaged realism with sparkling powers of metaphor and simile."

Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz


Maxim Biller - 2013
    His last chance of survival is to leave the home town to which, despite being in his late forties, he clings as if to a comforting blanket. So he retreats into his cellar (and sometimes hides under his desk) to write a letter to Thomas Mann: appealing to the literary giant to help him find a foreign publisher, in order that the reasons to leave Drohobych will finally outweigh the reasons to stay. Evoking Bulgakov and Singer, Biller takes us on an astounding, burlesque journey into Schulz's world, which vacillates between shining dreams and unbearable nightmares - a world which, like Schulz's own stories, prophesies the apocalyptic events to come.Includes two stories by Bruno Schulz: 'Birds' and 'The Cinnamon Shops', from The Street of Crocodiles.

No Tomorrow


Vivant Denon - 1777
    This tale of seduction is itself a seduction, with a plot that could be said to slowly unveil itself before arriving at last at an unexpected consummation.Summoned by Madame de T—— to her country house, the young hero of Deion's novella is taken on a tour of the grounds, only the beginning of a night that not only will be full of unanticipated delights but will give rise to unforeseen, perhaps unanswerable, questions. Lydia Davis's definitive translation of Denon's slim masterpiece is accompanied by the French text. Peter Brooks's illuminating introduction explores the mysteries of No Tomorrow's original publication and the subtleties of Denon's ethics of pleasure.

Life Goes On


Hans Keilson - 1933
    It is the story of Herr Seldersen—a Jewish store owner modeled on Keilson's father, a textile merchant and decorated World War I veteran—along with his wife and son, Albrecht, and the troubles they encounter as the German economy collapses and politics turn rancid.The book was banned by the Nazis in 1934. Shortly afterward, following his editor's advice, Keilson emigrated to the Netherlands, where he would spend the rest of his life.Life Goes On is an essential volume for readers of Keilson's later work. At the age of one hundred, with his one copy of the first edition of Life Goes On in hand, Keilson told The New York Times that he would love to see his first novel reissued, and translated as well. "Then you would have my whole biography," he told them. He died at the age of one hundred and one.

Wake Not the Dead


Ludwig Tieck - 2008
    Tieck's transition to Romanticism is seen in the series of plays and stories published under the title Volksmarchen von Peter Lebrecht (1797), a collection which contains the admirable fairy-tale Der Blonde Eckbert, and the witty dramatic satire on Berlin literary taste, Der Gestiefelte Kater. With his school and college friend Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773-1798), he planned the novel Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), which, with Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen (1798), was the first expression of the romantic enthusiasm for old German art. His writings between 1798 and 1804 include the satirical drama, Prinz Zerbino (1799), and Romantische Dichtungen (1799-1800). The latter contains Tieck's most ambitious dramatic poems, which were followed in 1804 by the remarkable "comedy" in two parts, Kaiser Oktavianus. These dramas, in which Tieck's poetic powers are to be seen at their best, are typical plays of the first Romantic school.

The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger


David Nobbs - 2012
    A reluctant father, shameless adulterer, and devotee of all things extravagant, Gordon lives an exclusive life filled with fine wines and surrounded by servants and mistresses. It would seem to be a world without want.So when revelations about his scandalous relationships and less than honest business practices emerge, the glamorous façade begins to crumble and those around him start to fear the worst. But, much to Gordon’s surprise, all he can feel is relief.The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger is a brilliant and often extremely funny examination of modern British values and the craving for a public fall from grace. In a world that is built on the crazy principles of wealth and celebrity, and which is driven by the insatiable desire to attain more and more, we meet the perfect anti-hero: Gordon Coppinger, a man going quietly sane.

The Last Carousel


Nelson Algren - 1973
    What we have here in this big fat volume is a cockeyed chrestomathy of 37 Algren pieces... with his hallmark stamped on every link." —The New York Times Book Review"The range of the book is satisfying—rich, will titillate even the most fastidious dilettante or culture vulture... also contains pieces that will make you laugh your head off. Once you begin reading it, you will not be able to put it aside." —The Chicago Tribune"Essential Algren." —The Washington Post"Very good, fast, funny and tough... Algren, where have you been hiding?" —The San Francisco ChronicleHere again is Algren's rich output from the 1960s and '70s, tough, streetwise stories and travelogues from around the world: accounts of brothels in Vietnam and Mexico, stories of the boxing ring, and reminiscences of his beloved Chicago White Sox, among other subjects.

Selected Poems and Fragments


Friedrich Hölderlin - 1843
    He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious sequence of hymns exploring cosmology and history, from mythological times to the discovery of America and his own era. The ’Canticles of Night’, by contrast, include enigmatic fragments in an unprecedented style, which anticipates the Symbolists and Surrealists. Together the works collected here show Hölderlin’s use of Classical and Christian imagery and his exploration of cosmology and history in an attempt to find meaning in an uncertain world.

Thérèse Philosophe


Jean-Baptiste de Boyer d'Argens - 1748
    Self-discovery in a convent leads her to her confessor, Father Dirrag, and she is soon launched upon the path of reason that convinces her that passion and love of the Deity are equal gifts of God. With additional mentors, Therese learns that sensations are but a part of temperament, as natural as hunger and thirst, and all may be satisfied as long as it does not harm others.

Hymns to the Night


Novalis - 1800
    The German text is en face. The six hymns comprise a deeply affecting poem that speaks across the centuries with unquestioned radiance."Appropriate for general readers and for scholars interested in the art of translation." — Choice