Hanna Krause war Blumenbinderin, bevor das Leben sie zur Kranführerin machte. Sie hat zwei Revolutionen, zwei Diktaturen, einen Aufstand, zwei Weltkriege und zwei Niederlagen, zwei Demokratien, den Kaiser und andere Führer, gute und schlechte Zeiten erlebt, hat sechs Kinder geboren und zwei davon nicht begraben können, was ihr naheging bis zum Lebensende. Hatte später, nachdem ihr Blumenladen...

Martina Clavadetscher begibt sich ins Dunkel der Geschichte und Gesellschaft, wo das Unerzählte lauert. Schicht für Schicht trägt sie ab, um zur historischen Wahrheit vorzudringen. Sie zeigt, dass Dulden die scheinheiligste Form des Verbrechens ist, weil es keinen Widerstand kennt. Sie lässt uns begreifen, dass wir Geschichte zwar nicht weiterspinnen, aber ihre vergessenen Fäden ins Sichtbare...

Der Traum vom Wohlstand hat sich für die meisten Figuren in Maria Leitners Hotel Amerika noch lange nicht erfüllt – unter harten Bedingungen schuften die irische Wäscherin Shirley, das schwedische Zimmermädchen Ingrid oder der deutsche Küchenjunge Fritz in einem New Yorker Luxushotel. Der Roman erzählt einen Tag aus ihrem Leben, der zunächst ganz normal mit den Vorbereitungen einer...

Ukrainian novelist and publicist Yan Valetov's novel 'The Best Age to Die' conceals, beneath the guise of a tense action film, a conversation about what awaits humanity if it doesn't come to its senses. The dynamic post-apocalyptic plot is truly intriguing, and you won't want to take a break from the characters, as something new is constantly happening to them. A terrifying virus has...

One February day, an elephant appears in every home. Enormous. Silent. Uninvited. No one knows where it came from or why it's there. Some pretend nothing is happening, others try to figure it out, and still others write about it in the comments. Sasha Filipenko's new novel is about fear and courage, about love and detachment, about people who have faced something greater than themselves and...

War and War, Laszla Krasznahorkai's second novel in English from New Directions, begins at a point of danger: on a dark train platform Korim is on the verge of being attacked by thuggish teenagers and robbed; and from here, we are carried along by the insistent voice of this nervous clerk. Desperate, at times almost mad, but also keenly empathic, Korim has discovered in a small Hungarian town's...

Now in paperback, Satantango, the novel that inspired Béla Tarr’s classic film, is proof that the devil has all the good times. Set in an isolated hamlet, the novel unfolds over the course of a few rain-soaked days. Only a dozen inhabitants remain in the bleak village, rank with the stench of failed schemes, betrayals, failure, infidelity, sudden hopes, and aborted dreams. ‘Their world,’ in the...

G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives...

Our narrator is held in complete darkness and isolation. His endless thoughts are turned into the book we are reading-Schattenfroh-directed by none other than the narrator's mysterious jailer by the same name. Undulating through explorations of Renaissance art, the German reformation, time-defying esoterica, the printing process in the sixteenth century, Kabbalistic mysticism, and beyond,...

On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic amusement park ride accident in an attempt to save a little girl’s life. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by both loved ones and distant strangers.

She is a winner of the NOS and Debut awards, as well as the Andrei Bely Prize. Alla Gorbunova's prose is utterly authentic and attracts a wide range of readers, from renowned literary critics, artists, and philosophers to college and high school students. This book is no exception. Funny, sad, touching, and sometimes terrifying, yet surprisingly vivid, these stories are imbued with the light of...

Mark Neider, a young Ukrainian-born American IT specialist, finds himself in crime-ridden Yeltsin’s Russia, hot on the trail of wheeler dealers who swindled him out of a small fortune back in New York. In Moscow, Mark survives an aborted coup in October 1993 and encounters a mysterious stranger who claims to have had a hand in the recent constitutional crisis. Tasha, Mark’s Moscow daredevil...