Authors

By Robert WalserTranslated from German by Susan Bernofsky "A clairvoyant of the small." — W.G. Sebald "Walser has in recent years regained some of the status he enjoyed in the 1920s. Instead of Kafka and Benjamin, we have Sebald and Lydia Davis championing him. But we still don’t know where we stand with him. Are we dealing with pure literature, the vagaries of the everyday, jokes, or empty fancies? The writing is radical and elegant enough to encompass all these possibilities and many more. Is it the stuff of life? Perhaps." —The Times Literary Supplement A Chirstine Burgin co-publication Now in paperback, with newly translated, additional microscripts and full-color paintings by Maira Kalman. Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper (many of them written during his hospitalization in the Waldau sanatorium) covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high, came to light only after the author’s death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of a Germanic script: a whole story could fit on the back of a business card. Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions from the original microscripts, these twenty-five short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated co-publication with the Christine Burgin Gallery. Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: the detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Sometimes Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them lengthwise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh and marriage proposals are some of Walser’s subjects. These texts take strength from Walser’s motto: “To be small and to stay small.” Paperback 160 pages New Directions/Christine Burgin, 2012 6 x 9 inches ISBN 9780811220330Literature

Microscripts

Original Price: $29.95 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Karolina Watroba This groundbreaking study of Franz Kafka’s legacy—to be published during the centenary of his death in 2024—explores Kafka’s life and influence in an entirely new and dynamic way. In 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of forty, readers all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time, and space, traveling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia, whose award-winning novels are, in part, homages to the great man himself. Metamorphoses presents a non-chronological journey through Kafka's life, combining literary scholarship with the responses of his readers throughout the last century. It is a both an exploration of Kafka's life and an exciting new way of approaching literary history. Hardcover254 pagesPegasus Books, 20246 x 1.1 x 9 inchesISBN 9781639366712Literary biography, literary history

Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka

By Maurice BetzTranslated by Will Stone "I owe Betz infinite gratitude…a first-rate poet, a creative spirit, and a friend to all creative spirits…an ornament to literary France…an artist with words, lovable and worthy of love" – Thomas Mann "Maurice Betz is one of those artists whose importance only fully appears after they have disappeared" – Marcel Aymé "The Betz translation of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge constituted a conversation, even a confidence. And this is what makes its perfection so vital. Rilke is more present there than any author translated from book to book. For here was a translation from heart to heart" –Jean Cassou Walking in the Luxembourg Garden, describing encounters with enigmatic diva Eleonora Duse or an irascible Tolstoy: Rainer Maria Rilke’s French translator Maurice Betz enjoyed a rare intimacy with the great poet. This account of their collaborative translation of Rilke’s only novel brings the reader along on a tour of the glittering cultural scene of interwar Paris. An elegant, poignant look at the great writer’s final years, Betz’s memoir, sensitively translated by Will Stone, is a portrait of genius, an evocation of a lost world, and a testament to enduring friendship. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe. Paperback224 pagesPushkin Press, 2025Originally published in 19375.1 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781805330288Essays, German Literature

Conversations with Rilke

By Gustav JanouchContribution by Francine Prose "This remarkable book, itself the result of a miraculous discovery of material believed lost, is one of the most exciting works—fiction, nonfiction, poetry—I remember having read." —Joyce Carol Oates, Partisan Review The value of Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka was immediately recognized when it was first published in America in 1953. Through a series of mishaps, however, the original text did not include several large and critical segments of the manuscript. The missing material, only recovered by chance, was integrated in 1971 into this revised and enlarged edition of Janouch’s extraordinary portrait of Kafka. “The living Kafka whom I knew,” the author writes in his post-script, “was far greater than the posthumously published books, which his friend Max Brod preserved from destruction. The Franz Kafka whom I used to visit and was allowed to accompany on his walks through Prague had such greatness and inner certainty that even today, at every turning point in my life, I can hold fast to the memory of his shade as if it were solidly cast in steel …. [He] is for me one of the last, and therefore perhaps one of the greatest, because closest to us, of mankind’s religious and ethical teachers.” Paperback228 pagesNew Directions, 20125.2 x 0.7 x 8 inchesISBN 9780811219501Biography, Literary Criticism

Conversations with Kafka

By Irmgard KeunTranslated by Kathie von Ankum “A highly original, extremely stylish novel...The narrator is a young woman whose irreverent and funny voice you will not easily forget.” —Daniel Kehlmann, New York Times Book Review “A young girl navigates interwar German society and the expectations—or lack thereof—placed upon women, in this poignant, melancholy novel from the late Keun…[This] heartbreaking story of dashed hopes is one that still has the power to affect and inspire.” —Publishers Weekly This enthralling tale of a “material girl” in 1930s Berlin is the masterpiece of a literary icon, rediscovered and restored to the same heights as such luminaries as Isherwood and Brecht. In 1931 a young woman writer living in Germany penned her answer to Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the era of cinematic glamour: The Artificial Silk Girl. Though a Nazi censorship board banned Irmgard Keun’s work in 1933 and destroyed all existing copies, the novel survived, as fresh and relevant today as the day it was written. The Artificial Silk Girl is the story of Doris, beautiful and striving, who vows to write down all that happens to her as the star of her own life story. But instead of scripting what she hopes will be a quick rise to fame and fortune as either an actress or the mistress/wife of a wealthy man, she describes a slow descent into near prostitution and homelessness. Prewar Berlin is not the dazzling and exciting city of promise it seems; Doris unwittingly reveals a bleak, seamy urban landscape. Paperback224 pagesOther Press, 20255.24 x 8 inchesISBN 9781635425086Fiction, Literature

The Artificial Silk Girl: A Novel

Von Rainer Maria Rilke. Mit einem Vorwort von Ulrich Baer Im Jahr 1902 erhält Rainer Maria Rilke Post von einem jungen Mann, Franz Xaver Kappus, einem literarisch begabten, 19-jährigen Offiziersanwärter. Kappus ist sich nicht sicher, welche Richtung er in seinem Leben einschlagen soll, und fragt daher den großen, nur wenige Jahre älteren Dichter um Rat. Rilke antwortet ihm – auf gänzlich unerwartete Weise. In den folgenden Jahren schreibt er Kappus neun weitere Briefe. Sie reden, mit der ihm eigenen bescheidenen Eindringlichkeit, von nichts Geringerem als dem richtigen Leben. Die von Franz Xaver Kappus 1929 herausgegebene Sammlung der Rilke-Briefe hat Epoche gemacht und ganze Generationen immer wieder inspiriert. Paperback 78 pagesText in German Insel Verlag, 20194.65 x 7.48 inchesISBN 9783458363828Literature

Briefe an einen jungen Dichter

Edited with text by Nicholas Sawicki and Marie Rakušanová Preface by Zuzana Jürgens Text by Alexander Klee, Marek Nekula, and Miroslav Halak Journey through Kafka’s Prague and discover the art, architecture, media and performances that influenced the author’s oeuvre What did Franz Kafka see and do, whom did he meet and what did he read while roaming the streets of Prague? Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka brings the world of turn-of-the-century Czechoslovakia and its cultural milieu to life. The author’s home city was a heterogeneous and multilingual metropolis whose visual environment shaped his everyday experiences, from local painting and sculpture to architecture, monuments and popular visual media including advertisements, photography and cabaret. Kafka’s attention to the modern visual culture of his era was reflected in his writings and in his interest in drawing, a practice in which he received preliminary training and which he took up in his free time during his years as a university student. This illustrated publication immerses us in Kafka’s world; by following in his footsteps and looking through his eyes, we gain a new understanding of his thoughts, philosophies and inspirations. Hardcover224 pages | 231 color and 16 tri-tone IllustrationsKant, 20258.25 x 11.25 inchesISBN 9788074374265Exhibition Catalogue, Biography

Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka: Between Image and Language

By Lene Rock The first extensive comparison of the German-Jewish literary corpus and contemporary minority writing in German Since the turn of the 21st century, countless literary endeavors by ‘new Germans’ have entered the spotlight of academic research. Yet ‘minority writing’, with its distinctive renegotiation of traditional concepts of cultural identity, is far from a recent phenomenon in German literature. A hundred years previously, the intense involvement of German-Jewish intellectuals in cultural and political discourses on Jewish identity put a clear stamp on German modernism. This book is the first to unfold literary parallels between these two riveting periods in German cultural history. Drawing on the philosophical oeuvre of Jean-Luc Nancy, a comparative reading of texts by, amongst others, Beer-Hofmann, Kermani, Özdamar, Roth, Schnitzler, and Zaimoglu examines a variety of literary approaches to the thorny issue of cultural identity, while developing an overarching perspective on the ‘politics of literature’. Paperback370 pagesLeuven University Press, 20206.14 x 9.21 inchesISBN 9789462701786Literary Criticism

As German as Kafka: Identity and Singularity in German Literature around 1900 and 2000

von Hermann HesseAusgewählt und mit einem Nachwort von Siegfried Unseld Siegfried Unseld stellt in diesem Band die ihm liebsten Gedichte von Hermann Hesse vor, also diejenigen Verse, von denen er im Nachwort sagt, dasss sie ihn durch sein Leben begleitet haben. Neben den schönsten Naturgedichten und Hesses zeitloser Gedankenlyrik (Glück, Bücher, Sprache, Besinnung, Stufen), enthält seine Auswahl auch Gedichte über die der Lyrik verwandteste Gattung, die Musik (Orgelspiel, Flötenspiel). Hesses Gedichte lösen ein, was er über den Impuls sie zu schreiben sagte: »Alle Lyrik ist Spiegelund der Welt im vereinzelten Ich, Antwort des ich auf die Welt, ist Klage, Besinnung und Spiel einer ganz und gar bewußt gewordenen Vereinsamung.« Wiedergaben der Handschriften und farbig reproduzierte Aquarelle des Dichters machen den Band zu einer bibliophilen Kostbarkeit. »Jeder, der eine solche Auswahl zu treffen hat, würde jeweils andere Gedichte bevorzugen, aber weiß zugleich: Die Gedichte sind ein Hauptteil von Hesses Werk, sie sind Hardcover 75 pagesInsel, 2025Text in German 4.61 x 0.39 x 7.28 inchesISBN 9783458192121Literature

Wege nach Innen: 25 Gedichte

By Erich Maria RemarqueTranslated by Kurt Beals An immediate sensation when it was published in 1929, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front has sold more than twenty million copies worldwide since then, making it the best-selling German novel of all time. Its impact is indisputable: it has been adapted for film, television, and other media; has influenced all subsequent works of war literature; and has been taught in high school and college classes ever since. Until now, one translation—published in 1929, and very much a product of its time—has introduced most readers in English to Remarque's wrenching portrait of the horrors of trench warfare. Now, nearly a century later, renowned translator Kurt Beals recaptures the energy and descriptive force of the German original, rendering Remarque's distinctly terse, telegraphic prose into a contemporary idiom, conveying for a new generation the immediacy and intensity of this classic novel. Hardcover240 pagesLiveright Publishing, 20255.8 x 0.9 x 8.6 inchesISBN 9781324006930Literature, Historical Fiction

All Quiet on the Western Front

By Ludwig Wittgenstein Introduction by Jan Zwicky Translated by Alexander Booth One of the greatest philosophical works of all time, in a new translation for the twenty-first century Widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a succinct yet wide-ranging exploration of language and logic, science and mysticism, which has inspired generations of thinkers, artists and poets. In a series of short, bold statements, Wittgenstein seeks to define the limits of language, its relation to logic, its power and its inherent failings. Originally published in the early 1920s, it is the only book-length work the renowned philosopher published in his lifetime. In this thrilling new translation, Alexander Booth displays an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtle influence on Wittgenstein’s gem-like prose–at once specialist and, often, remarkably plain-spoken–considering his background in mechanical engineering, while highlighting the underlying poetry of this seminal text. Paperback 144 pages Penguin Classics, 2025 5.06 x 7.76 inches ISBN 9780241484173 Philosophy

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: The New Translation

By Hannah ArendtEdited by Jerome Kohn and Thomas Wild A deluxe expanded edition of the masterpiece of political philosophy that transformed how the world thinks about fascism and authoritarianism Includes two fascinating chapters that were later cut and are available in no other edition In 1951, a monumental book by a relatively unknown German-Jewish émigré addressed the terrifying new mode of political organization underlying the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism. Herself a refugee from Nazi persecution, Hannah Arendt sought, from her exile in New York City, to answer the unfathomable questions raised by the Soviet gulag and the Holocaust: How could there be such barbarism in the midst of civilization? How had governments exerted such absolute control over citizens, terrorizing them and enlisting them to commit atrocities on their behalf? Arendt’s historical and cultural analyses extend to a thorough examination of nineteenth-century antisemitism in Europe, including a trenchant account of the Dreyfus Affair in France and brilliant insights into imperialism, racism, and their role in totalitarianism’s rise in the 1920s and 1930s. Arendt contends that totalitarianism, as a political system, is now embedded in contemporary life and is, as she would later remark, “the central event of our world.” Her clear-eyed warning that totalitarianism is not merely a historical episode but is rather a permanent feature of modernity and beyond—a danger never to be fully eradicated, and a continual temptation for anti-democratic demagogues—makes Arendt, a half-century after her death, a preeminent thinker and political philosopher for the twenty-first century. The Library of America edition of this indispensable and influential work, based on the final version she revised in her lifetime, also restores to print Arendt’s “Concluding Remarks” to the 1951 first American edition and a chapter on the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt of 1956, both of which were cut from later editions. The first annotated edition of Origins, the volume contains concise and thorough glosses on Arendt’s many historical and cultural references, and its Chronology provides a detailed portrait of her remarkable life. Hardcover900 pagesLibrary of America, 20254.8 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781598538069Political Theory, Philosophy

Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism Expanded Edition

By W.G. SeballiterTranslated by Jo Catling From the renowned author of Austerlitz (named a Top 10 Book of the 21st Century by the New York Times) comes the first English translation of his extraordinary essays on the Austrian writers who shaped his life and work. Silent Catastrophes brings together the two books W.G. Sebald wrote on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him: The Description of Misfortune and Strange Homeland, published in Austria in 1985 and 1991. As a German in self-chosen exile from his country of birth, Sebald found a particular affinity with these writers from a neighboring nation. The traumatic evolution of Austria from vast empire to diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Nazi Germany, meant that concepts such as “home/land,” “borderland” and “exile” occupy a prominent role in its literature, just as they would in Sebald’s own. Through a series of remarkable close readings of texts by Bernhard, Stifter, Kafka, Handke, Roth, and more, Sebald charts both the pathologies which so often drove their work and the seismic historical forces which shaped them. This sequence of essays will be a revelation to Sebald’s English-language readers, tracing as they do so many of the themes which animate his own literary writings, to which these essays form a kind of prelude. This is an essential new edition from “a writer whose life and work has become a wonderful vindication of literary culture in all its subtle and entrancing complexity” (The Guardian). Hardcover544 pagesRandom House, 20255.5 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9781400067725Literature

Silent Catastrophes: Essays

By Hans FalladaTranslated and Adapted by Alistair Beaton A gripping portrait of life in wartime Berlin and a vividly theatrical study of how paranoia can warp a society gripped by the fear of the night-time knock on the door. Based on true events, Hans Fallada's Alone In Berlin follows a quietly courageous couple, Otto and Anna Quangel who, in dealing with their own heartbreak, stand up to the brutal reality of the Nazi regime. With the smallest of acts, they defy Hitler's rule with extraordinary bravery, facing the gravest of consequences. Translated and Adapted by Alistair Beaton (Feelgood, The Trial Of Tony Blair), this timely story of the moral power of personal resistance sees the Gestapo launch a massive hunt for the perpetrators and Otto and Anna finding themselves players in a deadly game of cat and mouse. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Royal and Derngate Theatre in February 2020. Paperback120 pagesMethuen Drama, 20208 x 5 inchesISBN 9781350172401Hans Fallada, Plays

Alone in Berlin

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated from the German by Vita Sackville-West & Edward Sackville-WestIntroduction by Lesley Chamberlain The first-ever English translation of Rilke’s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West—reissued for the first time in 90 years In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press published a small run of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, in English translation by the writers Vita and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke’s masterpiece, which would eventually be rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. Published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests’ translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of Rilke’s poetry cycle. Featuring a new introduction from critic Lesley Chamberlain, this reissue casts one of European literature’s great masterpieces in fresh light. Paperback109 pagesPushkin Press, 2025Originally published in 19235.11 x 0.37 x 7.77 inchesISBN 9781782277804Poetry

Duino Elegies [Paperback]

By Thomas Mann “A classic novella about one man’s infatuation with a young boy’s ideal beauty as cholera sweeps through the canals of Venice, emptying the hotels and quieting the streets.” —Jillian Kravatz, Boston Magazine A "brilliant . . . perfectly nuanced translation" (The Boston Globe) of Thomas Mann's greatest short works Featuring his world-famous masterpiece, "Death in Venice," this collection of Nobel laureate Thomas Mann's stories and novellas reveals his artistic evolution. In a widely acclaimed translation that restores the controversial passages that were censored from the original English version, "Death in Venice" tells about a ruinous quest for love and beauty amid degenerating splendor. Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but lonely author, travels to the Queen of the Adriatic in search of an elusive spiritual fulfillment that turns into his erotic doom. Spellbound by a beautiful Polish boy, he finds himself fettered to this hypnotic city of sun-drenched sensuality and eerie physical decay as it gradually succumbs to a secret epidemic. Also included in this volume are eleven other stories by Mann: "Tonio Kroger," "Gladius Dei," "The Blood of the Walsungs," "The Will for Happiness," "Little Herr Friedmann," "Tobias Mindernickel," "Little Lizzy," "Tristan," "The Starvelings," "The Wunderkind," and "Harsh Hour." All of the stories collected here display Mann's inimitable use of irony, his subtle characterizations, and superb, complex plots. 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. Paperback384 pagesPenguin Classics, 1999Originally Published in 19125 x 7.7 inchesISBN 9780141181738German Literature

Death in Venice and Other Tales

By Bertolt Brecht with an introduction by Marc Silberman Edited by John Willett & Ralph Manheim “Casual wickedness, moral hypocrisy, determined self-interest - such are the familiar residents of Brecht's milieu . . .in this complete collection of his known finished stories . . . Chilling perfection.” ―Times Literary Supplement “Highly anecdotal, humourously accepting of the facts of life, like tales told by a clever seaman in a pub.” ―Guardian “These tales are the least known of Brecht's work, yet they underlie most of his major writings in other fields. Terse, mild-voiced, with piercing detail―a mine for short story addicts.” ―Observer Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great 20th-century innovators in theatre―the literary-theatrical equivalent of a Picasso or Stravinsky―and Germany's greatest poet of the last century, but the playwright was also a dazzling writer of stories. Storytelling permeated his art as a dramatist; fundamentally in his plays he was a storyteller. This volume collects the complete short stories written by Brecht, including the prize-winning 'The Monster', and the fragmentary memoir ghost-written by Brecht, 'Life Story of the boxer Samson-Körner'. Brecht scholar Marc Silberman provides an introduction and editorial notes. Paperback342 pagesBloomsbury Publishing, 20158 x 5 inchesISBN 9781472577511Drama, Poetry Anthology

Collected Short Stories of Bertolt Brecht

By Stefan ZweigTranslated by Anthea Bell In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig’s short stories the very best and worst of human nature are captured with sharp observation, understanding and vivid empathy. Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Perfectly paced and brimming with passion, these twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the Twentieth Century are translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell. Paperback720 pagesPushkin Press Classics, 2025 5.1 x 7.8 inches ISBN 9781805331827Literature, Short Stories

The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

Edited by Matthias Muhling, Karin Althaus, Adrian Djukic, Ara H. Merjian, and Stephanie Weber A detailed and intellectually invigorating collection that places Surrealism in the thick of the battle for political emancipation. The Surrealist movement famously initiated a revolution in visual and written art, but its political engagement is sometimes overlooked. With more than 600 illustrations and contributions from some of the greatest thinkers of the last 100 years. Surrealism and Anti-fascism provides a panoramic view of Surrealism’s opposition to fascism. Surrealists denounced European colonial policies, organized resistance to fascist governments and movements, fought for the Spanish Republic, were persecuted, escaped into exile and died in the war against the Nazis. Today, as fascist-adjacent regimes again begin to proliferate internationally, this volume, bringing together central texts of political Surrealism from the first manifestos to the present day, could not be more timely. Contributors include: Theodor W. Adorno, Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin, André Breton, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Robert Desnos, China Miéville, Lee Miller, Karel Teige, Leo Trotzki, Paul Westheim. Paperback680 pages | 400 color, 50 bwHatje Cantz, 20258.75 x 11 inchesISBN 9783775758772Surrealism, Theory

Surrealism and Anti-Fascism: Anthology

By Walter Benjamin Benjamin’s early attempt to understand a nascent technology, remarkably prescient and topical even today. “The illiterate of the future … will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.” So declared Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) in his essay A Little History of Photography, originally published in the periodical Literarische Welt in 1931. Beginning with the early experiments of Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce and concluding with the work of August Sander and Germaine Krull, Benjamin moved beyond the medium itself to address the artistic, societal and political capabilities that photography foretold. A Little History of Photography contains the inklings of his thoughts on “reproducibility” that he would later flesh out in his best-known text, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin’s view of photography gave early credence to the medium and its practitioners and shaped the methodology by which it can be analyzed. Paperback48 pages | 13 black-and-white illustrationsWalther König, 2025Originally published in 19314.5 x 7.25 inchesISBN 9783753304014Theory, Photography

A Little History of Photography

By Irmgard KeunTranslated by Geoff Wilkes Gilgi knows where she's going in life: she's ambitious, determined and fearless. She's not even derailed when her parents drop a massive bombshell on her twenty-first birthday. But then she meets the charming but aimless Martin, and for the first time, Gilgi finds herself blown bewilderingly and dangerously off-course. Set in Cologne against the backdrop of rising Nazism, Irmgard Keun's astonishing debut electrified Weimar Germany. With its frank exploration of sex, abortion, work and love, it feels as fresh today as when it first appeared. Paperback192 pagesPenguin Classics, 2019Originally published in 19317.76 x 0.43 x 5.04 inchesISBN 9780241391808Weimar Literature, Neue Sachlichkeit

Gilgi, One of Us

By Irmgard KeunTranslated by Kathie von Ankum Doris is going to be a big star. Wearing a stolen fur coat and recently fired from her office job, she takes an all-night train to Berlin to make it in the movies. But what she encounters in the city is not fame and fortune, but gnawing hunger, seedy bars, and exploitative men—and as Doris sinks ever lower, she resorts to desperate measures to survive. Very funny and intensely moving, this is a dazzling portrait of roaring Berlin in the 1920s, and a poignant exploration of the doomed pursuit of fame and glamour. Paperback208 pagesPenguin Classics, 2019Originally published in 19325.08 x 0.35 x 7.76 inchesISBN 9780241382967Weimar Literature

The Artificial Silk Girl

By Stephen Parker This first English language biography of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in two decades paints a strikingly new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons. First published in 2014 and now available in paperback, it was critically lauded and declared the definitive life of this great artist and writer. Drawing on letters, diaries and unpublished material, including Brecht's medical records, Parker offers a rich and enthralling account of Brecht's life and work, viewed through the prism of the artist. Tracing his extraordinary life, from his formative years in Augsburg, through the First World War, his politicization during the Weimar Republic and his years of exile, up to the Berliner Ensemble's dazzling productions in Paris and London, Parker shows how Brecht achieved his transformative effect upon world theatre and poetry. Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life is a powerful portrait of a great, compulsively contradictory personality, whose artistry left its lasting imprint on modern culture. Paperback704 pagesMethuen Drama, 20156.14 x 1.44 x 9.21 inchesISBN 9781474240000Biography, Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life

By Hannah ArendtTranslated and edited by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill "A new volume of [Arendt’s] poetry reveals that the author of sobering works like The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition was writing ardent and intimate verse in her off-hours."- Srikanth Reddy, The Paris Review A landmark literary event, What Remains collects Arendt’s complete poetic oeuvre—never before published in English. Internationally renowned as one of the twentieth century’s foremost public intellectuals, Hannah Arendt was also intensely private. Though she often acknowledged that the language of poetry—especially that of Dickinson, Goethe, and Lowell—informed her work, only a few people knew that Arendt herself wrote poems. In fact, between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote seventy-four poems, many of them signposts in an otherwise unwritten autobiography. For nearly forty years after her death, these poems remained hidden among the archives of the Library of Congress, until 2011, when they were rediscovered by scholar and translator Samantha Rose Hill. Now, for the first time in English, Hill and Genese Grill present Arendt’s poems in chronological order, taking us from the zenith of the Weimar Republic to the Cold War, and from Marburg, Germany, to New York’s Upper West Side. Throughout, Arendt uses poetry to mark moments of joy, love, loss, and reflection. In “W. B.,” written in 1942, she remembers Walter Benjamin, who died near the French-Spanish border while attempting to flee the Nazis: “Gentle whispering melodies / Sound from the darkness. / We listen so we can let go.” So, too, she reflects on mutability and transience in 1946: “I know that the houses have fallen. / We entered the world in them, wonderfully sure, that they / were more durable than ourselves.” She tries to understand her place in the world: “Ironically foolish, / I’ve forgotten nothing, / I know the emptiness, / I know the burden, / I dance, I dance / In ironic splendor.” A gift to all readers of Arendt, this stunning, dual-language edition provides an unparalleled view into the inner sanctum of one of our most original thinkers. Hardcover208 pagesLiveright, 20245.8 x 0.8 x 8.6 inchesISBN 9781324090526 Poetry, Hannah Arendt

What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt

By Stefan ZweigTranslated by Anthea Bell Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colorful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger in the crowd - a man who will risk everything to win. Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of obsession and the price of the past. Hardcover128 pagesPenguin Classics, 2023Originally published in 19424.63 x 0.54 x 6.61 inchesISBN 9780241630822Austrian Literature

Chess

By Sigmund Freud Freud was fascinated by the mysteries of creativity and the imagination. The groundbreaking works that comprise The Uncanny present some of his most influential explorations of the mind. In these pieces Freud investigates the vivid but seemingly trivial childhood memories that often “screen” deeply uncomfortable desires; the links between literature and daydreaming; and our intensely mixed feelings about things we experience as “uncanny.” Also included is Freud’s celebrated study of Leonardo Da Vinci-his first exercise in psychobiography. 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. Paperback240 pagesPenguin Classics, 20035.1 x 0.65 x 7.75 inchesISBN 9780142437476Psychology, History

The Uncanny

By Joseph Roth Translated by David Le Vay “An absorbing, dark, beautifully written” novel on the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire “written with the melancholy wit and grace of Gogol” (New Statesman, The Times) This deeply moving, deeply philosophical story set in Ukraine touches on timeless themes of uprooted identity, destiny, and loneliness Widely praised and rarely available in English, Weights and Measures builds on Roth’s most famous work, The Radetzky March. Among his final works, this fable about the disintegration of a good man transports us back in time to Eastern Europe’s borderlands in the early 20th century. In this haunting and poetic novel, scrupulous artillery officer Anselm Eibenschütz is persuaded by his wife to leave behind his job as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian army and take up a civilian post as Inspector of Weights and Measures in a secluded territory near the Russian border. Once there, his discipline and quiet dignity begin to dissolve as he encounters a shadowy world of smugglers, fugitives, and runaways. A deeply felt commentary on the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Weights and Measures registers on both a historical and personal level to portray the slow capitulation of a good man to insidious small-time corruption and to his own destructive passion. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: outstanding classic storytelling from around the world, in a stylishly original series design. From newly rediscovered gems to fresh translations of the world’s greatest authors, this series includes such authors as Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Gaito Gazdanov. Paperback112 pagesRandom House, Inc., 2024Originally published in 19375.1 x 0.48 x 7.78 inchesISBN 9781805330653Literary Fiction, Literature

Weights and Measures

By Bernadette Watts "Sensitive, tender, and gorgeously illustrated."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Inspired by a famous story of Franz Kafka, European artist Bernadette Watts reimagines the legend of this literary figure and the letters he writes to comfort a young girl who has lost her doll. Nothing is lost if it remains alive in our hearts! While strolling through the park, Franz Kafka hears the cry of a young girl named Saskia sitting with her mother. When Franz learns that the child has lost her beloved doll, Christiana, Franz reassures her that her doll is traveling the world. Upon their next fortuitous meetings, Franz presents Saskia and her mother with postcards from the lost doll—one from Paris, another from Venice, and finally one from Egypt. When Saskia insists that her doll Christiana come home from her travels, Franz is distraught until he finds a vintage doll in a secondhand shop. Saskia is skeptical—the doll looks old. But when Franz reminds her that we all age from our amazing journeys through life, her heart bursts with joy at their being reunited. Inspired by a famous story, this moving account of generosity highlights the power of imagination and offers a window into the enigmatic life of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Hardcover40 pagesAge range: 4-8NorthSouth Books, 2024 8.5 x 0.4 x 11 inchesISBN 9780735845565Children's, Art History

Wish You Were Here: Postcards from Franz Kafka

By Hans FalladaTranslated by Michael Hofmann “The greatest book ever written about the German resistance to the Nazis.” — Primo Levi “One of the most extraordinarily ambitious literary resurrections in recent memory.” —The Los Angeles Time “A riveting page turner.” —NPR’s Fresh Air This unflinching masterpiece based on a true story of resistance is more timely than ever, as fascist forces in the 20th century find their home in the rhetoric of the modern right-wing political agenda. Entering its 15th year of English translation, the brilliant Hans Fallada’s account of what The New Yorker called “a visceral, chilling portrait of … everyday German life during the war” follows a working-class couple in Berlin and grieving the loss of their son, launch a campaign to oppose the Nazi regime. Based on a true story from the files of the Gestapo, this sweeping saga of resistance is more relevant than ever in modern times, with the rise of right-wing rhetoric echoed in global politics, and seen in increased book bannings and the reversal of womens’ and LGBTQ+ rights in the US. In the end, it’s more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order—it’s a deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what’s right — even against impossible odds. Paperback592 pagesMelville House, 2024Originally published in 19475.5 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9781685891442Historical Fiction, Suspense Thriller

Every Man Dies Alone

By Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Edward Snow "This book has been central for many young poets, in many languages, for generations. Now, Edward Snow has created a fresh, inviting version in English."―Robert Pinsky "The Notebooks matches the literary heights of Rilke’s finest verse…Edward Snow’s new translation is an opportunity to revisit this elusive masterpiece."―Ratik Asokan, Nation A stunning, revelatory new translation of the only novel by one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, from one of “the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke’s contemporary translators”―Michael Dirda, Washington Post A groundbreaking masterpiece of early European modernism originally published in 1910, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge unspools the vivid reflections of the titular young Danish nobleman and poet. From his Paris garret, Brigge records his encounters with the city and its outcasts, muses on his family history, and lays bare his earliest experiences of fear, tenderness, and desolation. With a poet’s feel for language and a keen instinct for storytelling, Rainer Maria Rilke forges a dazzlingly fractured coming-of-age narrative, kaleidoscopic in its alternation of vivid present encounters and equally alive memories of childhood. Strikingly contemporary, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge reveals a writer metabolizing his own experiences to yield still-essential questions about fiction and reality, empathy and psychosis, and―above all―life, love, and death. In a fascinating introduction, award-winning translator Edward Snow explores the overlaps between Rilke’s experiences and those of his protagonist, and shows with granular attention the novel’s capacity for nuance and sympathy. Snow’s exquisite translation captures as never before the astonishing cadences and musical clarity of the poet’s prose. It reveals The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as an urgent contemporary achievement, more than one hundred years after it was written. Paperback256 pagesW.W. Norton & Company, 2023Originally published in 19105.5 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9781324066088Literary Fiction

Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel (Paperback)

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Ulrich Baer In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters — an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind Rilke's greatest poetry. The ten letters reproduced here were written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, and they contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. The poet himself afterwards stated that his letters contained part of his creative genius, making this volume essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse.Hardcover74 pagesInsel Verlag GmbH, 2018Originally published in 19294.8 x 7.4 inchesISBN 9783458194507 Classic Literature

Letters to a Young Poet

By Richard Schacht “Schacht’s long-standing and important thesis concerning Nietzsche’s naturalism is brought to fruition in this book. Nietzsche Pursued offers an invaluable, enriching, and superbly argued sequence of engagements with this extremely important thinker. This is an outstanding and original contribution to the field of Nietzsche studies by one of its most notable scholars.”—Peter R. Sedgwick, Cardiff University “The future of humanity is Nietzsche’s central concern. Nietzsche Pursued addresses current debates in innovative and inspiring ways, proposing nuanced solutions beyond established dichotomies such as moralism versus nihilism, essentialism versus perspectivism, and naturalism versus humanism. Schacht’s artful way of making sense of Nietzsche draws on a life’s work of exceptional scholarship and walks a virtuous tightrope between false alternatives.” —Helmut Heit, director of the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche, Weimar An ambitious venture into Nietzsche’s envisioned philosophy for the future. Nietzsche advocated for a post-theistic “philosophy of the future”—a new approach to human reality that would bend Western thought away from nihilism in a life-affirming, value-creative direction. His early demise left this endeavor only just begun. In Nietzsche Pursued, Richard Schacht examines Nietzsche’s revisionist approach to familiar philosophical topics, exploring how some may be further pursued in Nietzschean ways. Each chapter focuses on one topic that is central to Nietzsche’s vision of what philosophy can and should be and do. Among them: his kind of naturalism, humanity, perspectivism, morality, and music. Building on his analysis in Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy, Schacht invites readers to see with new appreciation the ongoing significance of Nietzsche’s thought for philosophy’s future. Hardcover376 pagesUniversity of Chicago Press, 20246 x 9 inchesISBN 9780226834665 Modern Western Philosophy, Ethics and Morality

Nietzsche Pursued: Toward a Philosophy for the Future

Written and Illustrated by Nicolas MahlerTranslated by Alexander Booth "If you are Nicolas Mahler, the writer and illustrator of a short but engaging graphic biography of the man, you’d see [Kafka] as a sort of blob of hair and eyebrows on a stick. The illustrations of Completely Kafka may look rudimentary, but they work. In fact they’re similar in style to the doodles Kafka himself would make in his notebooks."—Spectator "Much the best thing about the book are the charming black and white drawings. The best are the drawings of Kafka himself, drawn in thick brushstroke. Some are like cartoons, a few are more like Kafka’s own drawings, angular, isolated."—Jewish Chronicle A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death The young Franz Kafka has too many fears to name. Mirrors, clothing, his own body, almost everything causes him to fret. How did this ‘anxious and small bundle of bones’ become one of the world’s great writers? With telling details and sharply minimal illustrations, Nicolas Mahler tells a wickedly funny story of the development of Kafka’s genius, offering a tribute that is as playful as it is profound. Paperback128 pages Pushkin Press, 20245.35 x 8.44 inchesISBN 9781805331582Biography, Historic Graphic Novel

Completely Kafka: A Comic Biography

By Walter Benjamin Introduction by Stanley Mitchell Translated by Anna Bostock "A small bomb of ideas and vital argument."—Guardian"He does not abolish the distance between us and Leskov, or Brecht, or Kafka; he brings it to life."—Times Higher Education Supplement"If the killing of Lorca was Fascism’s first crime against literature, Benjamin’s death was undoubtedly the second."—The Listener A collection of essays of political philosophy by the renowned mid 20th-century critical theorist and literary critic The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht, both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices, continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the ‘midnight of the century’, with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it. In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin’s most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht’s oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques—such as the famous ‘estrangement effect’—Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin’s introductions to Brecht’s theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin’s insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire. Here we also find Benjamin’s masterful essay “The Author as Producer” as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht’s place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war. Paperback144 pagesVerso, 20245.5 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781804294796Literary Criticism, Theory and Aesthetics

Understanding Brecht

By Franz KafkaTranslated by Idris Parry A brilliant translation of one of the greatest works of Franz Kafka, author of Metamorphosis, telling the haunting story of a man’s desperate search for answers amid his prosecution for an unknown crime. A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis—an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life—including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door—becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. Paperback208 pagesPenguin Random House, 2024Originally published in 19255.1 x 7.75 inchesISBN 9780241678893Literature

The Trial (Penguin Classics)

By Franz KafkaIntroduction by Idris ParryTranslated by J. A. Underwood An acclaimed translation of the final work by Franz Kafka—author of Metamorphosis and some of the twentieth century’s greatest literature—following the story of a man’s bizarre, unending struggle to carry out his mysterious new job The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted land surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.’s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete. Paperback320 pagesPenguin Classics, 2024Originally published in 19265.1 x 7.25 inchesISBN 9780241678916Literature, Fiction

The Castle (Penguin Classics)

By Elias CanettiTranslated by Peter Filkins The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti’s powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, and musings on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings—from the ant, the fish, and the worm to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god—while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of despots to wield death as power. Interspersed with material from philosophers and writers such as Goethe, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser, The Book Against Death is ultimately a moving affirmation of the value of life itself. Paperback432 pagesNorton, 20245 x 8 inchesISBN 9780811237994 Literary Collection

The Book Against Death

By Rainer Maria Rilke Over the course of six years, Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. This volume also contains the 'Letter from a Young Worker', a striking polemic against Christianity written too in letter form. Hardcover128 pagesPenguin Clothbound Classics, 20234.49 x 0.55 x 6.46 inchesISBN 9780241620038 German Poetry

By Arthur Schnitzler Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. Like his Austrian contemporary Sigmund Freud, the doctor and writer Arthur Schnitzlerwas a bold pioneer in exploring the dark tangled roots of human consciousness. His novella Dream Story tells the tale of a young married man who, after a discussion with his wife about their fantasies, experiences an eerie reverie through Vienna's underbelly. Hardcover160 pagesPenguin Clothbound Classics, 20234.72 x 0.79 x 6.57 inchesISBN 9780241620229Vienna, Literary Fiction

Dream Story

By Franz KafkaTranslated and Edited by Mark Harman"The translations are surely definitive – Harman’s grasp of the German language is as comprehensive as was the Czech-born Kafka’s – but the prime value of the book is in the annotation. Every nuance of language is flagged, every cross-reference is followed up, every subtle shade of humour is highlighted. This is academic work as it should be done, in faithful service to the text and to its readers."―John Banville, The Guardian “Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating references to contemporary sources, critical commentary and relevant passages from Kafka’s letters and diaries…Anyone interested in knowing more about these stories will find this volume a treasure trove.”―Karen Leeder, Times Literary Supplement “[This book] gives us crisp new translations of Franz Kafka’s best novellas and tales and also a substantial scholarly introduction to his life and work…Ironies…lurk in Kafka’s fiction: in dry, dispassionate sentences that deliver disconcerting changes of perspective and in slyly matter-of-fact descriptions of uncanny events. Harman’s translations recreate these subtle effects with admirable precision; and by uncovering the veins of humour and hope in Kafka’s dark art, he may well win new readers for this gentle master of the absurd.”―Joachim Redner, Australian Book Review A superb new translation of Kafka’s classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated. Selected Stories presents new, exquisite renderings of short works by one of the indisputable masters of the form. Award-winning translator and scholar Mark Harman offers the most sensitive English rendering yet of Franz Kafka’s unique German prose—terse, witty, laden with ambiguities and double meanings. With his in-depth biographical introduction and notes illuminating the stories and placing them in context, Harman breathes new life into masterpieces that have often been misunderstood. Included are sixteen stories, arranged chronologically to convey a sense of Kafka’s artistic development. Some, like “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Hunger Artist,” and “The Transformation” (usually, though misleadingly, translated as “The Metamorphosis”), represent the pinnacle of Kafka’s achievement. Accompanying annotations highlight the wordplay and cultural allusions of the original German, pregnant with irony and humor that English readers have often missed. Although Kafka has frequently been cast as a loner, in part because of his quintessential depictions of modern alienation, he had a number of close companions. Harman draws on Kafka’s diaries, extensive correspondence, and engagement with early twentieth-century debates about Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and Zionism to construct a rich portrait of Kafka in his world. A work of both art and scholarship, Selected Stories transforms our understanding and appreciation of a singular imagination. Hardcover304 pagesBelknap Press, 20245.5 x .87 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9780674737983 Franz Kafka, Short Stories

F. Kafka: Selected Stories

By Franz KafkaSelected and with an Introduction by Joshua CohenA new selection of Franz Kafka’s shorter fiction and nonfiction work, selected and with a preface by Book of Numbers author Joshua Cohen.“Being asked to write about Kafka is like being asked to describe the Great Wall of China by someone who’s standing just next to it. The only honest thing to do is point.” —Joshua Cohen, from his foreword to He: Shorter Writings of Franz KafkaThis is a Kafka emergency kit, a congregation of the brief, the minor works that are actually major. Joshua Cohen has produced a frame that refuses distinctions between what is a story, a letter, a workplace memo, and a diary entry, also including popular favorites like The Bucket Rider, The Penal Colony, and The Burrow. Here we see Kafka’s preoccupations in writing about animals, messiah variations, food, and exercise, each in his signature style.Cohen’s selection emphasizes the stately structure of utterly coherent logic within an utterly incoherent and illogical world, showing how Kafka harnessed the humblest grammar to metamorphic power, until the predominant effect ceases to be the presence of an unreliable narrator but the absence of the universe’s only reliable narrator—God. Paperback320 pagesPicador Paper, 20224.93 x 0.75 x 7.5 inchesISBN 9780374538941 Franz Kafka, Short Stories

He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka

By Frank Tallis "Stunning in its breadth and depth, this is a magisterial treatment of a towering thinker." - Publisher's Weekly (starred review)"Convincingly critical and convincingly admiring―among the best of innumerable Freud bios." - Kirkus (starred review)A chronicle of Vienna's Golden Age and the influence of Sigmund Freud on the modern world by a clinical psychologist whose mystery novels form the basis of PBS's Vienna Blood series.Some cities are like stars. When the conditions are right, they ignite, and burn with such fierce intensity that they outshine every other city on the planet. Vienna was one such city and, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the birthplace of the modern mind and the way we live today. Long coffee menus and celebrity interviews are Viennese inventions. ‘Modern’ buildings were appearing in Vienna long before they started appearing in New York and the idea of practical modern home design originated in the work of Viennese architect Adolf Loos. The place, however, where one finds the most indelible and profound impression of Viennese influence is inside your head. How we think about ourselves has been largely determined by Vienna’s most celebrated resident, Sigmund Freud.In Mortal Secrets, Frank Tallis brilliantly illuminates Sigmund Freud and his times, taking readers into the mind of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, chronicling the evolution of psychoanalysis and opening up Freud’s life to embrace the Vienna he lived in and the lives of the people he mingled with from Gustav Klimt to Arnold Schönberg, Egon Schiele to Gustav Mahler. Mortal Secrets is a thrilling book about a heady time in one of the world’s most beautiful cities and its long shadow that extends through the twentieth century up until the present day.Hardcover 496 pagesSt. Martin's Press, 20246.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inchesISBN 9781250288950 Austrian History

Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind

Contributions by Tommy Orange, Ali Smith, Naomi Alderman, Elif Batuman and Helen OyeyemiWhat happens when Kafka’s idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? Find out in this anthology of brand-new Kafka-inspired short stories by prizewinning, bestselling writers.Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. He’s been hailed a profit and a diagnostician, and a century after his death, his unique perspective on the anxieties, injustices, and rapidly shifting belief systems of the modern world continues to speak to our contemporary moment. From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to an apartment search that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting. Inspired by a twentieth-century visionary, they speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.Paperback208 pagesCatapult, 20245.5 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9781646222636 Franz Kafka, Short Story Anthology

A Cage Went in Search of a Bird (Ten Kafkaesque Short Stories)

By Rainer J. Hanshe"With its ingenious orchestration of the archive and its sensitivity to both the depths and inadvertencies of the creative process, Closing Melodies maps the twin stories of the last days of Friedrich Nietzsche and Vincent van Gogh within a phantasmagoria of space, time, and vision. Rainer J. Hanshe has an unparalleled grasp of what might be called the analytics of genius." —Nicholas Birns, New York UniversityAs the 19th century comes to a close, Friedrich Nietzsche and Vincent van Gogh unknowingly traverse proximate geographical terrain, nearly circling one another like close but distant stars as the philosopher wanders between Nizza, Sils Maria, and Torino, and the painter wanders between Paris, Arles, and Saint-Rémy. In the midst of their philosophical and artistic pursuits, simultaneously, the Eiffel Tower, symbol of artistic progress and industrialization, begins to rise in Paris amidst clamors of protest and praise.Through intertwining letters written to (& sometimes by) friends, family, and others, the philosopher and painter are brought into ever-greater proximity as we witness their daily personal and artistic struggles. Woven between and interrupting this panoply of voices are a series of intervals, short illuminating blasts, like a camera’s exploding flash powder, of artistic, scientific, political, and other events spanning 1888 to 1890, drawing Nietzsche and Van Gogh in and out of the wider expanses of history.As construction of the Eiffel Tower comes to completion in Paris and Elisabeth Förster, the sister of the philosopher of the will to power, tries to found a utopic race colony in South America, the lives of Nietzsche and Van Gogh come to their terrible denouements. Her brother now a full-fledged zombie, the former queen of Nueva Germania seizes the reins of his living corpse and rides him into the future.With no deus ex machina in sight, and none possible, WWI and the terrors and the beauties of the 20th century crack the horizon.Paperback836 pagesContra Mundum Press, 20236 x 1.85 x 9 inchesISBN 9781940625522History, Biography

Closing Melodies

This book was featured in our Lecture Series. Translated by Ulrich Baer from the collection edited by Rainer StammIntroduction by Jill LloydThe painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke were two of the most talented and original creative artists at work in early twentieth-century Europe. They enjoyed a close friendship that left in its wake a remarkable series of letters. Encompassing topics such as art, literature, and the nature of marriage, their correspondence testifies to both writers’ brilliant descriptive gifts and penetrating social intelligence. Brought together in English for the first time, the letters that Modersohn-Becker and Rilke sent to one another provide a fascinating view of everyday life during an exceptionally fertile and exciting period of cultural production.Paperback120 pagesEris Press, 20247.8 x 5.1 inchesISBN 9781916809901Biography, Correspondence, Art History

The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence

By Stefan Zweig “I found it terrible, yet at the same time touching, for in all the years of the war I had not seen so perfect and pure an expression of bliss on any German face.” An ostensibly whimsical story about the adventures of a Berlin art dealer, Stefan Zweig’s The Invisible Collection is a powerful evocation of the condition of Germany between the wars. When Zweig’s anonymous narrator sets off to the provinces in search of a lucrative bargain, he finds himself caught up in the slow unfolding of a family tragedy—and is confronted with a unique reminder of the power of art…Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.Paperback36 pagesEris Gems, 2024Originally published in 19257.68 x 4.33 inchesISBN 9781912475865 Literary Fiction

The Invisible Collection

By Walter Benjamin Translated by Harry Zohn “I fully realize that my discussion of the mental climate of collecting will confirm many of you in your conviction that this passion is behind the times, in your distrust of the collector type. Nothing is further from my mind than to shake either your conviction or your distrust.” Walter Benjamin was one of the great cultural critics of the twentieth century. In Unpacking My Library he offers a strikingly personal meditation on his career as a book collector and on the strange relations that spring up between objects and their owners. Witty, erudite and often moving, this book will resonate with bibliophiles of all kinds.Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.Paperback24 pagesEris Gems, 2022Originally published in 19317.64 x 4.33 inchesISBN 9781912475841 Essays

Unpacking My Library

By Mary Bergstein “Visual Cultures in Freud's Vienna provides for the first time a serious and comprehensive account of seeing in Freud's Vienna. With the acumen of a brilliant historian of photography and the visual arts, Bergstein meticulously reconstructs the visual ambience of fin-de-siècle Austria, exposing many of the subliminal patterns of seeing in Freud's world. A necessary read for those engaged in understanding how our visual world limits and expands our understanding of psychic processes.” ―Sander Gilman, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Director, Program of Psychoanalysis, Emory University, USA Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna shows how photography and film in turn-of-the-century Vienna (the birthplace of psychoanalysis) not only reflected modernist ideas already in force, but helped to bring into being what might be referred to as a “psychoanalytic imagination.” Mary Bergstein demonstrates that visual images not only illustrated, but also engendered ways of seeing social, psychological, and scientific ideas during a formative time in the creation and development of psychoanalysis and the modern age. Indeed, she argues that visual culture initiated significant aspects of psychoanalytic thought.Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna examines a variety of visual materials and texts, ranging from scientific illustrations to popular "low culture" and even forms of erotica, including film. Attention is also given to women's dresses and shoes in a social context and as they are represented in photography and circulated as fetish objects.Bergstein maintains a commitment to women's history and feminist inquiry throughout, particularly in her final chapter, which is devoted to the representations of women in the erotic photography and film. Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna is well illustrated with images drawn from the sources discussed and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of modernism and psychoanalysis.Paperback240 pages | 68 color and black-and-white imagesBloomsbury Academic, 20245.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9798765111956 Sigmund Freud, Viennese Culture

Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna: Science, Eros, and the Psychoanalytic Imagination

By Heinrich MieierTranslated by Justin Gottschalk A reappraisal of Ecce Homo and The Antichrist within Nietzsche’s oeuvre.Nietzsche’s Legacy takes on the most challenging and misunderstood works in Nietzsche’s oeuvre to illuminate his view of what a philosopher is and what constitutes a philosophic life. Interpreting Ecce Homo and The Antichrist as twin books meant to replace the abandoned Will to Power project, Heinrich Meier recovers them from the stigma of Nietzsche’s late mental collapse, showing that these works are, above all, a lucid self-assessment. The carefully written pair contains both the highest affirmation—the Yes of the “revaluation of all values”—and the most resolute negation—the No to Christianity. How the Yes and the No go together, how the relation between nature and politics is to be determined, how Nietzsche’s intention is governing the political-philosophical double-face: this is the subject of Nietzsche’s Legacy, which opens up a new understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole.Hardcover288 pagesUniversity of Chicago Press, 20246 x 9 inchesISBN 9780226751979Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s Legacy: Ecce Homo and The Antichrist, Two Books on Nature and Politics

With an Introduction by Will StoneTranslated by Will StoneAn intimate glimpse into the life and letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. In July 1921, displaced European poet Rainer Maria Rilke sequestered himself in the chateau of Muzot, a thirteenth-century medieval tower perched in the vineyards above the town of Sierre in the Canton Valais, Switzerland. In this sun-flooded landscape of the Rhone Valley, he found beguiling echoes of Spain and his beloved Provence. Here, the Duino Elegies were famously completed and the Sonnets to Orpheus followed. During this time, Rilke’s correspondence also bloomed, and Letters around a Garden collects some of those letters together into English for the first time. One intriguing exchange from 1924 to 1926 was with a young aristocratic Swiss woman Antoinette de Bonstetten, a passionate horticulturist who had been recommended as a potential advisor for the redesign and upkeep of the Muzot rose garden. In twenty-two precious letters originally written in French, Rilke relishes the prospect of their elusive meeting, keenly discusses the plans for his garden, and wittily laments the trials of his plants. Beyond the encomium for Paul Valéry and poignant memory of place are passages of exquisite writing, in which Rilke evokes with trademark sensitivity the delicate relationship between the changing seasons and the natural world of his adopted region. We also witness the loving relationship evolve between these sometime-fugitive correspondents and how questions of solitariness and companionship impinge on one who faces unaccustomed challenges as his health tragically declines.Paperback96 pages | 3 halftones Seagull Books, 20245 x 8 inches ISBN 9781803093345Literature, Letters

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