Heir to the philosophical-fantastical tradition of Borges, Calvino, and Perec, The Golden Age is Michal Ajvaz’s greatest and most ambitious work.
The Golden Age is a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book...
I’m not crazy. I don’t see what the big deal is about what happened. But apparently someone does think it’s a big deal because here I am. I bet it was my mother. She always overreacts.
Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year’s Day to...
An ambitious and far reaching allegorical voyage which, though not exactly a success, was Melville's first attempt at a book on the scale of Moby-Dick. Here is a passage which is reflective of the style, and outlook, of Mardi:So, if after...
A novel about love, death and guilt; in particular the consequences of legalised assisted dying.
Haunted by a mysterious and half remembered event from her early childhood, Marianne’s life evolves from her upbringing in Vermont, to her...
Twelve Years a Slave / Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in...
A bravura performance by a groundbreaking new writer — a novel set in contemporary Barcelona and made up of multiple storylines, including a fictional manuscript by Stephen King.
Wonderful World is the story of a son trying to make his father...
Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town —...
A guidebook introduces foreign visitors to a recognizable but dreamlike America, where mirrors are haunted and the Statue of Liberty wears a bowler hat. A department-store supervisor must discipline employees who don’t smile enough at customers,...