With her characteristic brilliance, Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer follows the inner lives of characters confronted by unforeseen circumstances. An earthquake offers tragedy and opportunity in the title story, exposing both an ocean bed...
Tatyana Tolstaya's powerful voice is one of the best in contemporary Russian literature. She wrote many a commentary on modern-day Russia for the New York Review of Books before moving back to Moscow to complete her first novel, The Slynx....
From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel, spanning three generations, about a mismatched marriage — and its consequences. Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple — young, good-looking, made for each other. The...
Gyula Krúdy is a marvelous writer who haunted the taverns of Budapest and lived on its streets while turning out a series of mesmerizing, revelatory novels that are among the masterpieces of modern literature. Krúdy conjures up a...
Don DeLillo's follow-up to Libra, his brilliant fictionalization of the Kennedy assassination, Mao II is a series of elusive set-pieces built around the themes of mass psychology, individualism vs. the mob, the power of imagery and the search for...
Amazon.com ReviewBetter than any book I can think of, White Noise captures the particular strangeness of life in a time where humankind has finally learned enough to kill itself. Naturally, it's a terribly funny book, and the prose is as...
When originally published in 1993, Ruined City (Fei Du) was promptly banned by China’s State Publishing Administration, ostensibly for its explicit sexual content. Since then, award-winning author Jia Pingwa’s vivid portrayal of...
Daisy Savage has one goal when she signs up to volunteer at her daughter's high school: get her hours done and go home. But that's before she discovers the school's computer lab has been robbed over the weekend, leaving a shell-shocked staff and a...
With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, “A Walk in the Wild Side” has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first...