Simón Bolívar. The Liberator, the greatest hero of the War of Independence, a legendary figure. A ruler who voluntarily relinquished power. Only recently, he had commanded armies and held sway over nations, and then, suddenly—resignation. The final months of Bolívar’s life are a period about which historians know almost nothing. Yet, under the pen of the greatest master of magical realism,...

*The Alchemist* is the most famous novel by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and a beloved book for millions of people around the world. In their youth, people are not afraid to dream; everything seems possible to them. But as time passes, a mysterious force begins to suggest that their desires are unattainable.

— For all fans of the famous novel *Gone with the Wind*. — A cult family saga set in Australia and New Zealand between 1915 and 1969. — The best-selling book in the history of Australian literature. — The novel’s total print run exceeds 33 million copies. — The novel has been adapted for both screen and stage; the 1983 miniseries became the second most popular American miniseries in television...

The novellas and short stories collected in this volume represent the gold standard of our literature—its true treasure. The joy, lightness, cheerfulness, and openness of Yuri Koval’s prose—and its ability to speak directly to the reader’s heart—transform it into something more than mere writing; it becomes an indispensable remedy for the terrible afflictions that dog us like shadows:...

‘Ivan the Terrible is waiting for the End of the World. In the pride of autocracy, he imagines himself as the savior of the people, the Christ of the Second Coming, and establishes the oprichnina - the order for the defense of the faith. If the people believe in the tsar as in God, the tsar will become a miracle worker. With a wave of his hand, he will plunge all enemies into dust and cover the...

Kidnapped is a madcap crime spree that caroms from crisis to crisis, through lands real and imagined. It tells the tale of Sergei Sertsov, not one but two boys from Moscow with more than just a name in common, and the women who go to great lengths to protect them. The story unfurls in a whirlwind of deceit and double crossing—babies are switched at birth, documents forged, palms greased,...

A novel about obsessive love and madness set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy’s eerily beautiful novel begins innocently enough: ‘At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell.’ But there is nothing innocent here. With the off-handed remorselessness of a young Eve, the narrator describes her potentially lethal designs to win the affections of Fréderique, the apparently perfect...

This absorbing, sensitive novel portrays a famed author in a moment of crisis: an aging Hugo von Hofmannsthal returns to a summer resort outside of Salzburg that he visited as a child. But in the spa town where he once thrilled to the joys of youth, he now feels unproductive and uninspired, adrift in the modern world born after World War One. Over ten days in 1924 in a ramshackle inn that has...

Two elderly people, Artur and Isabella, meet and have a passionate sexual encounter on New Year’s Eve. Details of the lives of Artur, a retired Yugoslav army captain, and Isabella, a Holocaust survivor, are revealed through police dossiers. As they fight loneliness and aging, they take comfort in small things: for Artur, a collection of 274 hats; for Isabella, a family of garden gnomes who live...

The Hothouse traces the tragic final two days in the life of a minor German politician, Keetenheuve, a man disillusioned by the corruption of his country after World War II. Following his self-imposed exile during the war, Keetenheuve returns to the hothouse: the city of Bonn, the capital of that new postwar capitalist nation, West Germany. Until this point he has led a life guided by principle...

Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the Swiss writer Robert Walser. Narrated in Walser's inimitable, playful language, these theatrical pieces overturn traditional notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into metatheater, even metareflections. Snow White forgives the evil queen for trying to kill her, Cinderella doubts her prince and enjoys being hated...

Crazy, funny and gorgeously dark, Kornél Esti sets into rollicking action a series of adventures about a man and his wicked dopplegänger, who breathes every forbidden idea of his childhood into his ear and then reappears decades later. Part Gogol, part Chekhov, and all brilliance, Kosztolányi in his final book serves up his most magical, radical, and intoxicating work. Here is a novel which...