Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Justine is a painting, a doppelgänger and a woman of beguiling beauty. Set in contemporary London, Justine is a story of a man’s obsession with a woman – or is it two women? For Justine has a...
After My Fashion has an unusual publishing history. Although it was John Cowper Powys third novel written in 1920, it wasn't published until 1980. It seems that when his US publisher turned it down Powys made no effort to place it elsewhere. Indeed,...
Summoned home to Egypt after a long European debauch (disguised as “study”), our hero Teymour — in the opening line of A Splendid Conspiracy—is feeling “as unlucky as a flea on a bald man’s head.” Poor Teymour sits forlorn in a...
Elizabeth Bishop’s prose is not nearly as well known as her poetry, but she was a dazzling and compelling prose writer too, as the publication of her letters has shown. Her stories are often on the borderline of memoir, and vice versa. From her...
In a famous but declining Hollywood bar works A Barman. Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. In the hope of uncovering their secrets and...
Revered Turkish novelist Hasan Ali Toptaş—“Turkey's Kafka”—weaves a mysterious and masterful tale of love and friendship, guilt and secrets in his first novel translated into English.
Thirty years after...
Nada is no stranger to protest. She is five years old when her French mother takes her to visit her Egyptian father, a political activist with a passing resemblance to President Nasser, in prison. When he returns home five years later, a changed...
“Of my generation I most admire Daniel Sada, whose writing project seems to me the most daring.” —Roberto Bolaño.
This Rabelaisian tale of lust and longing in the drier precincts of postwar Mexico introduces one of...
“Anyone who has had experience of the sad and subtle ways in which human beings torment one another under license of family ties will appreciate the merits of A.B. Yehoshua’s A Late Divorce.” —London Review of Books
A powerful story...