Ginster is a war novel about not going to war; about how war, far from the front, comes to warp every aspect of outer and inner life and to infect the workings of language itself. The subject is World War I, but this novel by the brilliant twentieth-century sociologist, journalist, and film critic Siegfried Kracauer, first published in 1928, has as much to say about what it means to live under...

Set in a world of its own, Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs is both a mesmerizing work of fantasy and an allegory of the advent of fascism. The narrator of the book and his brother, Otho, live in an ancient house carved out of the great marble cliffs that overlook the Marina, a great and beautiful lake that is surrounded by a peaceable land of ancient cities and temples and flourishing...

Written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922—garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word robot. Mass-produced as efficient laborers to serve man, Capek’s Robots are an android product—they remember everything but think of nothing new. But the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning, and the humans they serve stop...

Three by Tsvetaeva collects three dazzling and devastating reckonings with love and the end of love by a poet celebrated for the unequaled verbal inventiveness and emotional intensity of her work. ‘Backstreets,’ translated into English for the first time, is a retelling of a Russian fairy tale that offers a witches’ brew of temptation, bodily transformation, marriage, and murder. ‘Poem of the...

Vasily Grossman wrote three novels about the Second World War, each offering a distinct take on what a war novel can be, and each extraordinary. A common set of characters links Stalingrad and Life and Fate, but Stalingrad is not only a moving and exciting story of desperate defense and the turning tide of war, but also a monumental memorial for the countless war dead. Life and Fate, by...

An Ordinary Youth is a novel drawn directly from the author's boyhood in Nazi Germany. Nine-year-old Walter's family is moving house when the novel opens, but Walter's main concerns are his tin soldiers and his older brother’s jazz records, his father’s fluctuating moods, and his mother’s ministrations and anxieties. While Walter is absorbed by his private life, the extraordinary accumulation...

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie love their nearly inseparable life together. But soon Nick will be leaving for university, and Charlie, a year younger, will be left behind. Everyone's asking if they're staying together, which is a stupid question... or at least that's what Nick and Charlie assume at first. As the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie start to...

Charlie zdecydowanie zbyt wczesnie doswiadcza okrucienstw losu. Ukochany ojciec popelnia samobójstwo, a dziewczynka nie znajduje oparcia w pograzonej w zalobie i niemocy matce. Zostaje sama z lekiem i bólem, z ciezarem nie do udzwigniecia. Ucieka w glab siebie, milknie i wraz z uplywem lat staje sie calkowicie samotna, smutna dziewczyna.

KRÓL MUSI UMRZEC. TYLKO JAK ZABIC NIESMIERTELNEGO? Królestwo Yusanu cierpi pod rzadami króla-boga, Joona. Mozni bogaca sie ponad miare, biedni cierpia glód i niewole. Czara goryczy juz dawno sie przelala. Piatka nieznajomych odpowiada na wezwanie. Sa wsród nich najemnik szukajacy odkupienia, zabójczyni walczaca o wolnosc, ksiaze wygnany za dawne zbrodnie. Kazde z nich jest smiertelnie...

‘If you stare at the dead for too long, they’ll start talking to you.’ The events of Alexey Polyarinov’s novel unfold in a world where, thirty years after a catastrophe, ‘cadavers’—frozen figures of dead children—have appeared across the country. The protagonists, Matvey and Dasha, set out on an expedition through the south to study these mysterious anomalies. Along the way, they discover how...

In the early 1920s, the poet and prose writer Konstantin Vaginov was a member of Gumilev’s ‘Guild of Poets,’ followed by stints in the literary groups ‘The Islanders’ and ‘The Ring of Poets,’ and eventually the poetry section of OBERIU. He authored four books of remarkable poetry and four novels; the first of these—*Goat Song*—earned Vaginov a reputation as a subtle, witty, and highly...