This title features a selection of essays, in addition to a bibliography, a chronology of Remarque's life, and an introduction.

    She knows that you can't enter a country without a passport or visa, and that she and her parents can't go back to Germany again-her father's books are banned there. Her mother would just like to settle down, but as her restless father struggles to find a new publisher, the three must escape from country to country as their visas expire, money runs out and hotel bills mount up.In this utterly enchanting novel, some of the great themes of 1930s Europe are refracted through the eyes of a child who is both naive and wise beyond her years. Irrepressible Kully, her charming, feckless father and her nervy, fragile mother are brought to life through Irmgard Keun's fastpaced prose.

    The stories range from the tragic to the comic, though Mo Yan's humor is always tinged with a shade of black. They embody, too, the author's deep and abiding love of his fellow man, equaled only by his intense disdain of bureaucracy and repression--despite which his fiction is never didactic. Satire, fantasy, the supernatural, mystery: all are present in this remarkable and intensely enjoyable volume.- The release of award-winning director Zhang Yimou's major film adaptation of the title story (Happy Times) in summer 2002 heightened the visibility of both the author and this collection.- This paperback is being published simultaneously with the author's mangum opus, Big Breasts and Wide Hips--a return to the sweep and ambition of his bestelling Red Sorghum--which will receive major critical acclaim and further raise Mo Yan's profile in the States.- One of the stories in the volume serves as a companion piece to the author's hugely popular Red Sorghum.- Hardcover ISBN: 1-55970-565-5

    This classic work of post-war fiction was made into a magnificent BBC television series starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

    By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey—In silence? What could they possibly say to one another?—with the reader gaining entrée to the most private of thoughts. This is a psychological thriller about past romance, with all its pain and promise.

    Playing games with the basic units of both life and fiction—the solid certainties of the self, the world around us, and the words we use to describe these things to one another—Mieko Kanai creates a reality where nothing is certain, and where a little boy going out to run errands for his mother might find that he’s an adult, and his mother long dead, at the end of a single train ride. Using precise language to describe dreamlike plots owing as much to Kafka and Barthelme as to Kenzaburō Ōe and the long tradition of the Japanese folktale of the macabre, The Word Book is an unforgettable voyage to absurd, hilarious, and terrifying locales, and is the English-language debut for one of the greatest and most interesting Japanese writers working today.

    But in a moment of vulnerability he makes a mistake: volunteering his unhinged Arabic-speaking cousin Boris to report on the Iraq War. Boris begins filing Gonzo missives from the conflict zone and Toni decides it is better to secretly rewrite his cousin’s increasingly incoherent ramblings than face up to the truth. But when Boris goes missing, Toni’s own sense of reality—and reliability—begins to unravel.Our Man In Iraq, the first of Robert Perisic’s novels to be translated into English, serves as an unforgettable introduction to a vibrant voice from Croatia. With his characteristic humor and insight, Perisic gets to the heart of life made and remade by war."Robert Perisic depicts, with acerbic wit, a class of urban elites who are trying to reconcile their nineties rebellion with the reality of present-day Croatia. . . . The characters' snide remarks could easily sound cynical but the novel has a levity informed by the sense of social fluidity that comes with democracy." —The New Yorker"Robert Perisic is a light bright with intelligence and twinkling with irony, flashing us the news that postwar Croatia not only endures but matters."—Jonathan Franzen" . . . terrifically witty and original. . . in addition to being a delightfully acerbic primer on a literarily underrepresented part of Europe, Our Man in Iraq may well prove to be one of those rare cases where something is actually gained in translation."— The Toronto Star

    As they travel, they discover how cruel the world can be, but also how wondrous.

    At the center of the novel is Silvio, who has returned to this small town after years away. As his narration unfolds, we are given an intimate picture of the loves and infidelities, the scandals, the youthful ardor and regrets of age that tie Silvio to the long-guarded secrets of the past.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    as one of this century's most innovative writers. Now Godine is pleased to issue two of his most powerful novels in one volume: Things, in an authoritative new translation, and A Man Asleep, making its first English appearance. Both provoked strong reactions when they first appeared in the 1960s; both which speak with disquieting immediacy to the conscience of today's readers. In each tale Perec subtly probes our compulsive obsession with society's trappings the seductive mass of things that crams our lives, masquerading as stability and meaning.Jerome and Sylvie, the young, upwardly mobile couple in Things, lust for the good life. "They wanted life's enjoyment, but all around them enjoyment was equated with ownership." Surrounded by Paris's tantalizing exclusive boutiques, they exist in a paralyzing vacuum of frustration, caught between the fantasy of "the film they would have liked to live" and the reality of life's daily mundanities.In direct contrast with Jerome and Sylvie's cravings, the nameless student in A Man Asleep attempts to purify himself entirely of material desires and ambition. He longs "to want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep." Yearning to exist on neutral ground as "a blessed parenthesis," he discovers that this wish is by its very nature a defeat.Accessible, sobering, and deeply involving, each novel distills Perec's unerring grasp of the human condition as well as displaying his rare comic talent. His generosity of observation is both detached and compassionate.

    Contributors include: Tom Bissell, Sean Warren, Samantha Hunt, Robert Olmstead, T.C. Boyle,  David Means, Doug Dorst, Joyce Carol Oates, A.G. Pasquella, Brent Hoff, Stephen Elliott, Daphne Beal, Denis Johnson, and many others. McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Issue 11 comes complete with a letters section and an interview with prominent scientists, in this case with those investigating the recently found colossal squid, the largest known to man.

    Already an award-winning writer, ZZ Packer now shares with us her debut, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decides where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are starving, unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream.With penetrating insight that belies her youth—she was only nineteen years old when Seventeen magazine printed her first published story—ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a striking performance—fresh, versatile, and captivating. It introduces us to an arresting and unforgettable new voice.Brownies --Every tongue shall confess --Our Lady of Peace --The ant of the self --Drinking coffee elsewhere --Speaking in tongues --Geese --Doris is coming

    Though originally denounced as pornographic, Kvachi's tale is one of the great classics of twentieth-century Georgian literature -- and a hilarious romp to boot.

    His epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency.

    Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her repetitive cadences and burning images of grief and loss. And yet, in the beauty of her images there is a tremendous affirmation of the world.