twisted spoon press prague (179 risultati)

softcover. Condizione: Fine copy in fine dust jacket. 2nd prt. 8vo, 149 pp.

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. Otto Gutfreund (illustratore). [1st printing] 2007. Trade-sized; gate-fold covers.Creasing, corner wear. Book.

softcover. Condizione: Fine copy. 1st. 8vo, 153 pp.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Richard Teschner (illustratore). Paperback. Leppin once wrote: "Prague remains my deepest experience. Its conflicts, its mystery, its ratcatcher's beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning." It is this city of darkened walls and strange decay that forms the backdrop of Severin's erotic adventures and fateful encounters as he enters a world of femmes fatales, Russian anarchists, dabblers in in the occult, and denizens of decadent salons. First published in 1914, Leppin seeks to unlock the mysterious erotic nature of his native city buried deep in the subconscious of its inhabitants. His depiction of this world, in a Prague straddling the border between the ancient and the modern, has brought Severin's Journey into the Dark deserved international acclaim. As Max Brod so aptly remarked: "Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague." Fiction. Revised edition. Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut. Frontispiece by Richard Teschne. First published in 1914, this acclaimed novel is set in Prague, a city of darkened walls and strange decay which forms the backdrop for Severin's erotic adventures and fateful encounters A[a¬A a world of femmes fatales, Russian anarchists, dabblers in the occult, and denizens of decadent salons. Subitled "A Prague Ghost Story," Leppin seeks to unlock the mysterious erotic nature of his native city buried deep in the subconscious of its inhabitants. As Max Brod so aptly remarked: "Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague, its infamous sidestreets and debauched nights . . . a poet of eternal disillusionment, he was at once a servant of the devil and an adorer of the Madonna." Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Lucia Nimcova (illustratore). Paperback. Called "the Czech Cioran" by Andrei Codrescu, Robert Gal is one of the freshest voices to come from Prague over the past few years. His writing is a mix of philosophy and prose poetry that explores the tenuousness of one's identity and existence. Ironical in his outlook, Gal's aim with this volume is to bring the great Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran into the present in the same way that John Zorn, whose music provided the impetus for writing this book, brought Ornette Coleman into the present. The volume includes aphorisms and longer and shorter "philosophical" fragments. The photographs by Lucia Nimcova were taken specifically for this collection. As aptly described by well-known psychiatrist/publisher Ales Pech, Nimcova's nude self-portraits act as a "counterpoint to the philosophical denuding that is the book's basic premise." Poetry. Robert Gal is one of the freshest voices to come from Prague over the past few years. His writing is a mix of philosophy and prose poetry that explores the tenuousness of one's identity and existence. Ironical in his outlook, Gal's aim with this volume is to bring the great Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran into the present in the same way that John Zorn, whose music provided the impetus for writing this book, brought Ornette Coleman into the present with Spy Vs. Spy. This volume is a composition of aphorisms, longer and shorter fragments of thought, and the photographs of Lucia Nimcova, which were taken specifically for this collection. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Toward the end of his life Leppin wrote: "Prague remains my deepest experience. Its conflict, its mystery, its rat-catcher's beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning." Others' Paradise represents one of the most intense expressions of this experience. Beginning with the highly imagistic "The Doors of Life," the eight stories contained in this volume detail the contours of the lives and visions of a collection of Prague inhabitants, from a prostitute bound to the decay of the old Jewish quarter, to a man caught in the memory of a lost love, and a shoemaker whose knowledge of the world has been constricted to the view from the window of his cellar workroom. Amidst their differing circumstances what these characters share is an intense desire for lasting human contact and the fated disappointment of all such aspirations. Binding their personal histories, woven into their most intimate details, is Prague itself, the city whose nature, mythical and yet all-too-real, gives shape and force to their desires while simultaneously determining their frustrations. Toward the end of his life Leppin wrote: "Prague remains my deepest experience. Its conflict, its mystery, its rat-catcher's beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning." Others' Paradise represents one of the most intense expressions of this experience. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Poetry. Southeastern European Studies. Selected and Translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin with Radu Andriescu, Mircea Ivanescu, and Bogdan Stafenescu. Some of the most groundbreaking works of European literature, such as Rimbaud's Illuminations and Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, have been prose poetry. The present volume--a substantial selection from three contemporary Romanian prose poets--draws on this tradition. Cristian Popescu experimented with personal myth by parodying his family and himself. The Bucharest found here is often sinister, cold, and dark. Displaying a mordant sensibility that could be called "urban pastoral" rather than political, he conducts his convivial disputations with God in the vernacular of the street. Iustin Panta, from Sibiu in Transylvania, is more lyrical and intimate in exploring his personal autobiography. An amalgam of form, his prose poem takes on an aura of suspended meaning, a constellation of objects, gestures, conversations, and private associations that eschews the grotesquerie and solecism found in Popescu's work. Radu Andriescu is from the artistic hotbed of Iasi, straddling the Moldavian border. His work is exuberant, direct, often manic (see his Club 8 Manifesto), and he is completely comfortable appropriating the forms of today's digital and media culture. A complex topography of language, his work ranges from the quotidian to inner meditations to fantasy, creating a texture that is thick with images and phrases often bordering on the absurd. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Few Polish prose writers of the past ten years have attracted as much delight and bewilderment as Natasza Goerke. Her stories, which are commonly fastened with predicates like "surreal," "grotesque," "ludicrous," "ironic," and "extravagant," call to mind the absurdist and parabolic work of Daniil Kharms, Slawomir Mrozek, Clarice Lispector, and Antonio Tabucchi. Although her reluctance toward straightforward narration, her refusal of any "responsibility" on the part of the writer to provide metaphysical product for the national masses, and her involvement with esoteric perspectives such as Buddhism and Asian cultures generally, all have caused less avant-garde-friendly critics to shake their heads in consternation, her erudition and extremely fine feeling for the Polish language have earned her recognition from all quarters as one of the most innovative and important voices of the younger generation. (from the Translator's Note) Farewells to Plasma is a selection of short stories and prose from the three volumes Goerke has published in Polish. Fiction. Few Polish prose writers of the past ten years have attracted as much delight and bewilderment as Natasza Goerke. Her stories, which are commonly fastened with predicates like "surreal," "grotesque," "ludicrous," "ironic," and "extravagant," call to mind the absurdist and parabolic work of Daniil Kharms, Slawomir, Mrozek, Clarice Lispector, and Antonio Tabucchi. FAREWELLS TO PLASMA is a selection of Goerke's short stories and prose from her three volumes in Polish "The transgression and abolition of borders, the permeation of East and West, tradition and modernity, dream and reality - these are the narrative coordinates of Goerke's universe, teeming with those who are wandering, searching, yearning - and, chiefly, loving"-S?ddeutsche Zeitung. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Fiction. In many ways a companion to ASHTRAYS, Tomin's previous novel, KYE shifts the setting from Paris, where exuberance was found in excess, to London, where the organism senses it is out of balance and is acutely aware of its decay. The euphoria has long passed as Kye is unable to break the inertia of his drinking, smoking, and unfulfilled sexual fantasies. As such, Tomin explores the trap exile has become for him, making clear his identity as Czech. Gradually overcome by his impotence to act decisively, Kye reflects on all that was left and lost "back there." Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Cristian Opris (illustratore). Paperback. Fiction. Soren A. Gauger's first collection of short stories was entirely written in Krakow, Poland, where he moved four years ago. Taking as his raw materials the treatment of the fantastic found in Borges and Kis, the misanthropic musings of Gombrowicz and Bernhard, and a literary understanding of philosophy, Gauger's stories are formally challenging yet evasive of post-structuralist clichA[aAs. They often deal with the chaotic fragmentation of the individual, who is mindful of both society and literature, while exploring the blank spaces implicit somewhere behind the narrative. Fiction. Soren A. Gauger's first collection of short stories was entirely written in Krakow, Poland, where he moved four years ago. Taking as his raw materials the treatment of the fantastic found in Borges and Kis, the misanthropic musings of Gombrowicz and Bernhard, and a literary understanding of philosophy, Gauger's stories are formally challenging yet evasive of post-structuralist clichA[a¬As. They often deal with the chaotic fragmentation of the individual, who is mindful of both society and literature, while exploring the blank spaces implicit somewhere behind the narrative. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Rut, Pavel (illustratore). Paperback. Fiction. Translation. Hermann Ungar (1893-1929) was born to a prominent Jewish family in Boskovice, Moravia and studied in Berlin and Prague where he later lived. THE MAIMED is a novel set in Prague that relates the story of a neurotic, socially inept bank clerk who is eventually forced to have sexual relations with his widowed landlady. He must also witness the physical and mental deterioration of a friend who is suffering from an unnamed disease. Part psychological farce, THE MAIMED is a dark, ironic tale of chaos overtaking one's meticulously ordered life. This is the first time Hermann Ungar's work has appeared in English. In his time, Ungar was praised by Thomas Mann who commented about THE MAIMED ."a sexual hell, full of filth, crime and the deepest melancholy--a monomaniacal digression of an inwardly pure artistry." Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut. Illustrated by Pavel Rut. Fiction. Translation. Hermann Ungar (1893-1929) was born to a prominent Jewish family in Boskovice, Moravia and studied in Berlin and Prague where he later lived. THE MAIMED is a novel set in Prague that relates the story of a neurotic, socially inept bank clerk who is eventually forced to have sexual relations with his widowed landlady. He must also witness the physical and mental deterioration of a friend who is suffering from an unnamed disease. Part psychological farce, THE MAIMED is a dark, ironic tale of chaos overtaking one's meticulously ordered life. This is the first time Hermann Ungar's work has appeared in English. In his time, Ungar was praised by Thomas Mann who commented about THE MAIMED ."a sexual hell, full of filth, crime and the deepest melancholy—a monomaniacal digression of an inwardly pure artistry." Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut. Illustrated by Pavel Rut. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Poetry. Art. MR. HADLIZ is a combination of poetry, prose, and art. The twelve pictures that form the cycle were created by "froissage," a method invented by Novak of interpreting crumpled paper. This work by the deceased Czech Surrealist is evidence of his remarkable versatility in phonetic and visual poetry. "Novak ranks among the great solitary figures of Czech art"--Jiri Valoch. "Among these lines the artist hunts down hidden images"--Jo Ann Lewis. "It is clear to the poet's eyes that it's impossible to separate imagination from reality, because the former is just a more beautiful side of the other, its hidden projection behind the external shape of things.[Novak] removes all that is superfluous.to let out the shining miracle trapped inside"--Edouard Jaguer. The Transformations of Mr. Hadliz is a combination of poetry, prose, and image. The twelve pictures, taken from a Danish calendar for 1976, are created by "froissage," a particular method that Novak invented of interpreting the random lines formed by crumpling paper. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Aquamarine, fluid like water, is a compound of two elements: language and imagery. "Aquamarine" and "Marine," crisscross diverse Mexican landscapes and cities, of both external and internal geographies, much like a road movie plowing straight through historical episodes into the present. The "revolution" of the river, the people, the places: they come and go, leave and return, are drawn from the ether about us and disappear again into nothingness, which is a something-ness - if the narrator chooses it to be. Aquamarine is a novel comprising seven "tales" that explore the unfolding of an idea, of sitting before a palette and taking some blue, yellow, and beiges, or "leg-colored" ideas and wrapping them around like a coiled garden hose with all its kinks, awkward convolutions, and ungainly twists, each loop having its own radius but belonging to the same - is the same - loop. Revolution in every sense. Aquamarine, a fluid like water, is a compound of two elements: language and imagery flowing over Mexican landscapes and cities, both external and internal geographies. The revolution of the river, the people, the places: they come and go, leave and return, are drawn from the ether about us and disappear again into nothingness, which is a something-ness if the narrator chooses it to be. Aquamarine is a novel comprising seven tales that explore the unfolding of an idea, of sitting before a palette and taking some blue, yellow, and beiges, or leg-colored ideas and wrapping them around like a coiled garden hose with all its kinks, awkward convolutions, and ungainly twists, each loop having its own radius but belonging to the same is the same loop: revolution in every sense. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Peter Nadas is one of the most renowned contemporary Hungarian authors. A Lovely Tale of Photography displays his essentially experimental orientation. It is a hallucinatory novella about a female photographer who is suffering from an undetermined illness. Confined to a sanatorium, where she is surrounded by a cast of stock characters speaking various languages, she is made to confront a reality other than that framed by her camera. The novel takes the form of short scenes, as if a film sequence, and this structure lends the text a fairy-tale, poetic quality similar to many surrealist works. Nominated for the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Fiction. Peter Nadas, born in 1942 in Budapest, is the author of A BOOK OF MEMORIES and THE END OF A FAMILY STORY, which have won him wide acclaim as the outstanding Hungarian writer of his time. A LOVELY TALE OF PHOTOGRAPHY is an hallucinatory novella about a female photographer who is suffering from an undetermined illness. Confined to a sanitorium, where she is surrounded by a cast of stock characters speaking various languages, she is made to confront a reality other than that framed by her camera. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Hailing from a small ethnic Hungarian village in Transylvania, Sandor Kanyadi (1929-2018) lived his life in Romania where through his work as a writer, translator, and editor he endeavored to keep his language and culture alive amid an often hostile environment. There was probably no Hungarian town or village of any size in the whole Carpathian Basin that Kanyadi had not visited to recite in schools and libraries not only his owns poems but also the Hungarian classics (and always from memory). Like all great poets his work encompasses many styles and forms, often incorporating elements of folk songs and popular myth. A recipient of many literature awards in Europe, including the top prizes in Romania and Hungary both, this is the first comprehensive volume of his poetry to be published in English. Poetry. Sandor Kanyadi is from a small ethnic Hungarian village in Transylvania. He has lived his life in Romania where through his work as writer, translator, and editor he has endeavored to keep his language and culture alive amidst an often hostile environment. There is probably no Hungarian town or village of any size in the whole Carpathian Basin that Kanyadi has not visited to recite in schools and libraries. Like all great poets, his work encompasses many styles and forms, often incorporating elements of folk songs and popular myth. A recipient of many literature awards in Europe, including the top prizes in both Romania and Hungary, this is the first comprehensive volume of his poetry to be published in English. Translated by Paul Sohar. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. This title is part of a series devoted to writing by Anglophone authors living in Europe. Other titles in this series are: "Seances by Louis Armand Hymns to Millionaires" by Soren Gauger; "The Book of Amuwapi" by Christopher Lord; "Junkie Love" by Phil Shoenfelt. Joshua Cohen has performed in-depth investigations into mirrors and navels to return with "The Quorum", his first collection of short fiction. A set of ten stories, a set of dreams, and a long monologue, these are all first-person rants given over by the somehow alienated, individuals seeking only a sympathetic hearing, all dealing with identity and religion as well as occupied with technical ideas of reliable narration and the structure of the mind's ear.From a review of a book about the Holocaust that's six-million blank pages to a suicide note from a young university student, from a letter to home outlining an economy based on hair to a eulogy for a poem, from a story narrated by three-hundred concubines to the title story about a group of people who interchange appearances, habits, proclivities and talents, "The Quorum" is a sensitively written and inevitably absurd take on the individual's lifelong quest to get someone, anyone, to listen. Twisted Spoon Press was founded in 1992 as an independent publisher devoted to new writing and new translations, often in conjunction with graphic art. Based in Prague, it offers a unique selection of literature in English from Central and Eastern Europe, from emerging as well as internationally recognized authors. Care is taken with translation, illustration, and design as we produce books that are of literary as well as artistic merit. Part of a series devoted to writing by Anglophone authors living in Europe. This title features ten stories, a set of dreams, and a long monologue, given by individuals, who are somehow alienated, seeking only a sympathetic hearing, dealing with identity and religion as well as occupied with technical ideas of reliable narration. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. An enquiry into the nature of eroticism, an unflinching exploration of the physical and psychological aspects of love bordering on sexual mysticism, OUT OF ONESELF is a collection of two novellas that expore two different epochs in Hungarian history through the sexual relationships of its characters, who are passionately searching for a way out of their hapless and sinful world. Each story revolves around a seductive, alluring actress, whose erotic attraction is turned into mythic proportion by the aura of the stage or the screen in scenes of such sexual explicitness and obsessiveness in its description that one is reminded of Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. "There is not the slightest doubt that what Andras Palyi has been doing is nothing short of tempting God. It is impossible to read him without a feeling of reverential dread. He blasphemes, he challenges and wages war against God"--Peter Nadas, BOOKLIST Fiction. Translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein. An enquiry into the nature of eroticism, an unflinching exploration of the physical and psychological aspects of love bordering on sexual mysticism, OUT OF ONESELF is a collection of two novellas that expore two different epochs in Hungarian history through the sexual relationships of its characters, who are passionately searching for a way out of their hapless and sinful world. Each story revolves around a seductive, alluring actress, whose erotic attraction is turned into mythic proportion by the aura of the stage or the screen in scenes of such sexual explicitness and obsessiveness in its description that one is reminded of Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. "There is not the slightest doubt that what Andras Palyi has been doing is nothing short of tempting God. It is impossible to read him without a feeling of reverential dread. He blasphemes, he challenges and wages war against God"—Peter Nadas. REVIEW IN BOOKLIST by Brend Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Poetry. Tomaz Salamun is perhaps the most popular and prolific poet in Central Europe today. Thanks to the translation of his work he has also been widely acclaimed abroad. To date he has had four collections of selected poetry published in English. A BALLAD FOR METKA KRASOVEC, originally published in the 1980s by Harcourt, at the mid-point of Salamun's career, is considered by the author to be one of his finest works. The volume is characterized by often striking imagery and sexual turmoil. It is the first complete single volume of his to appear in English translation. The translator is Michael Biggins, who is a Slavic and East European Studies librarian at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle. SPD also carries Salamun's FOUR QUESTIONS OF MELANCHOLY (White Pine). Poetry. Tomaz Salamun is perhaps the most popular and prolific poet in Central Europe today. Thanks to the translation of his work he has also been widely acclaimed abroad. To date he has had four collections of selected poetry published in English. A BALLAD FOR METKA KRASOVEC, originally published in the 1980s by Harcourt, at the mid-point of Salamun's career, is considered by the author to be one of his finest works. The volume is characterized by often striking imagery and sexual turmoil. It is the first complete single volume of his to appear in English translation. The translator is Michael Biggins, who is a Slavic and East European Studies librarian at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle. SPD also carries Salamun's FOUR QUESTIONS OF MELANCHOLY (White Pine). Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. I, City is a novel about the city of Most in north Bohemia, an ancient city founded on a primeval wetland that was literally "relocated" to get to the brown coal beneath it. The city is the narrator, telling its own story through its inhabitants, who make their "appearances" in fleeting, ghost-like vignettes, Joycean epiphanies straight out of a Bohemian Dubliners. The "I" that purports to be Most seems to be an entire consciousness, at enough of a remove from the town itself that he, she or it can see and can know seemingly everything, past and present. As Most's inhabitants emerge from the pollution, or from the swamp of the town's founding, we find not individuals but representatives. Theirs are historical lives that mistrust history, or that live it at least with typical Czech irony. This abstraction, Brycz's making of archetypes, isn't accomplished in a spirit of abuse. Brycz obviously loves his "small" people, and has more than sympathy--he is one of them. As Brycz makes fictional people say factual things and factual people (Kafka, the Pope, the last president of Communist Czechoslovakia, Gustav Husak) say fictional things, post-modernity via Marquez and other so-called Magical Realists makes its almost requisite--though noiseless--appearance. Awarded the prestigious Jiri Orten Prize in 1999, I, City is many things: a novel-in-stories, a series of lyrical prose sketches in the best easterly European tradition of Danilo Kis, or Isaac Babel. "I, City" is many things: a novel-in-stories, a series of prose sketches in the tradition of Danilo Kis or Isaac Babel. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In Europe, taking a walk is a cultural phenomenon having an almost mystical import. It connects physical activity with meditation, silence within amid the tumult without. Taking its cue both from Joyce's Ulysses and Hrabal's stream of anecdote, Of Kids & Parents is about a father and son taking a walk through Prague, over the course of which, and in the pubs and bars they stop into, their personal lives are revealed as entwined with the past sixty years of upheaval in their corner of Europe. One's small history is inseparable from the large History that is played out on the world's stage: families are uprooted, relationships fail, and still life goes on as it always does. Hakl's genius is his ability to mesh the two into a seamless flow of dialogue. As the father tells his son: "Nothing's been new in this world for more than two billion years, it's all just variations on the same theme of carbon, hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen." The point being that even though Prague over the course of a century has experienced monarchy, democracy, fascism, communism, and democratic capitalism once again, as wars, putsches, and revolutions have come and gone, what really has changed? The novel was awarded the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year in 2002 and is currently being made into a feature film due for release in 2008. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Poetry. Translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter. Nichita Danilov (b. 1952) places himself in the tradition of mystics such as Meister Eckhart, St, John of the Cross, and Pseudo-Dionysius. Combining the spiritual heritage of his native Romania with a surrealist poetics, his writing is playful, ironic, and language-centered, engaging in games of a metaphysical depth. In this selection of his poetry (presented bilingually) and prose, Danilov describes a world full of caprice in a voice coming from the darkness of a purgatory where the divine appears in bizarre images. Poetry. Translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter. Nichita Danilov (b. 1952) places himself in the tradition of mystics such as Meister Eckhart, St, John of the Cross, and Pseudo-Dionysius. Combining the spiritual heritage of his native Romania with a surrealist poetics, his writing is playful, ironic, and language-centered, engaging in games of a metaphysical depth. In this selection of his poetry (presented bilingually) and prose, Danilov describes a world full of caprice in a voice coming from the darkness of a purgatory where the divine appears in bizarre images. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Fiction. Amuwapi is the name of a prehistoric god who lives alone in the Palace of the Moon and weeps ceaselessly. He is associated with tears, with writing, with the sundial, with menstruation, and with a human sacrifice cult which has left traces in the civilizations of the dawn of history. THE BOOK OF AMUWAPI is a collection of documents from various civilizations and periods associated in some way with the cult of Amuwapi, varying from ancient legal documents to Javanese folk tales. Intertwined with this reconstruction of the Amuwapi cult is the story of the catfish, who meets Amuwapi at the beginning of the book and is advised to carry out a search for love. Handsomely illustrated by Petr Nikl. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Fiction. A sculptor dying of a mysterious illness leaves the city behind in order to live out his final days in solitude in a village somewhere in Eastern Europe. His sole contact is with a deaf-mute gravedigger named Vojtech, a golem-like figure who delivers the necessary provisions--when he remembers to show up. A nameless wanderer traverses the barren streets of an unknown city in search of his next prey. Fiction. A sculptor dying of a mysterious illness leaves the city behind in order to live out his final days in solitude in a village somewhere in Eastern Europe. His sole contact is with a deaf-mute gravedigger named Vojtech, a golem-like figure who delivers the necessary provisions—when he remembers to show up. A nameless wanderer traverses the barren streets of an unknown city in search of his next prey. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Aviaries is a novella composed of random diary entries, vignettes, dreams, observations, interior monologues, meditations, short anecdotes, newspaper headlines, and excerpts from poetry and prose, central among which is a passage from C.G. Jung's essay on the Kore. All these elements meld together in a collapse of time to create, similar to the work of Unica Z rn and Leonora Carrington, a phantasmagoria of the life of a woman navigating a city indifferent to those living on the margins. Interactions with other residents of Prague's Sm chov district, characters who might be figments of her imagination, and the other women in her life - infirm mother, artsy sister, absent, dumpster-diving daughter - have reached a point where fantasy and reality have seamlessly merged. The death of V clav Havel in 2011 provides the opening, and from there the prose throbs in a kaleidoscope of contemporary news reports, flights of hallucination, wordplay, and metaphoric association to testify to what it is like to be alone and lost and indigent in a world that has stopped making sense. It is a brutal vision of present-day Prague where life has become a morass of the bizarre and the grotesque. Brabcov 's final book before her unexpected death, Aviaries received the Josef Skvoreck Award in 2016 for best prose of the year and was shortlisted for the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year Award in 2017. Recipient of the Josef Skvorecky Award in 2016 for best prose of the year and shortlisted for the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year Award in 2017. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Poet, translator, scholar, Jerzy Ficowski is the author of "Regions of the Great Heresy" (W.W. Norton, 2003), a biography of Bruno Schulz, and "A Reading of Ashes", a collection of poetry. In the stories that comprise "Waiting for the Dog to Sleep", he weaves memory, religious ritual, daily life, and the magical, hinting at a sinister presence lurking in the distance - a trace of ruin or disintegration always present as the narrator repeatedly struggles to link some aspect of a past that has been annihilated with a present that is foreign and hostile. Presents stories which weaves memory, religious ritual, daily life, and the magical, hinting at a sinister presence lurking in the distance - a trace of ruin or disintegration always present as the narrator repeatedly struggles to link some aspect of a past that has been annihilated with a present that is foreign and hostile. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In these letters written to April Gifford (Dubenka) between 1989 and 1991 but never sent, Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) chronicles the momentous events of those years as seen, more often than not, from the windows of his favorite pubs. In his palavering, stream-of-conscious style that has marked him as one of the major writers and innovators of postwar European literature, Hrabal gives a humorous and at times moving account of life in Prague under Nazi occupation, Communism, and the brief euphoria following the revolution of 1989 when anything seemed possible, even pink tanks. Interspersed are fragmented memories of trips taken to Britain - as he attempted to track down every location mentioned in Eliot's "The Waste Land" - and the United States, where he ends up in one of Dylan Thomas's haunts comparing the waitresses to ones he knew in Prague. The result is a masterful blend of personal history and fee association rendered in a prose as powerful as it is poetic. Fiction. Translation from the Czech by James Naughton. Bohumil Hrabal's TOTAL FEARS is a series of letters Hrabal wrote during the collapse of the Czech communist regime from 1989-1992. The letters were what Hrabal referred to as his "lyrical reportage" and were addressed to an American student who went by the alias Dubenka. The letters follow a free-associative logic and are sometimes imaginary, making the book a testament to memory with "quick, rambling, spoken but purposeful writing" —The TLS. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A village in the Carpathian Mountains, one of the last outposts of pre-modernity, an elderly man, sensing his time is short, tells his young grandchildren tales that weave a family saga covering the real history from the 1870s to the time of the telling. One of the children, now grown, is the re-teller of these tales, while the other, Miruna, perhaps has the gift of second sight. Incorporating elements of fantasy common to the storytelling traditions of the Balkans, historical characters mix with imaginary beings in a landscape that recreates the world of an isolated village bearing an unusual name: Evil Vale. Ancestors are talked about as if ancient heroes, and the novel shifts focus between telling about their lives and the storyteller's own experiences through the prism of the village during both world wars. As past tragedies are presented in a way that the grandchildren might picture and remember them, the novel has been called a kind of meta-fairy tale, a story about the lost tradition of oral storytelling itself, the conveyance of a family history from one generation to the next via the spoken word. With the death of the grandfather, the children realize that confronted with the ubiquitous hand of modernity, which the village has managed to frustrate over a succession of regimes, a whole world of stories and the entire memory of a family and of its idiosyncratic way of life in the village might have been irrevocably lost. Blending the autobiographical and historical with the marvelous, Miruna, a Tale is a novel whose core is the exploration of the imaginary themes and motives that informed traditional society in the mountainous regions of Romania, a world that was radically transformed into virtual extinction over the course of the 20th century. Described by one critic as a "literary jewel whose strange and singular spell holds the reader in its thrall," Miruna, a Tale received the Bucharest Writers Association Fiction Award in 2007. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Philosopher, novelist, essayist, eccentric, no other Czech author has had a greater impact on underground culture than Ladislav Klima (1878-1928). Mentor to artists as varied as Bohumil Hrabal and the Plastic People of the Universe, Klima's philosophy was radically subjectivist, and he felt it should be lived rather than merely spoken or written about. With Nietzsche as his paragon, he embarked upon a lifelong pursuit to become God, or Absolute Will, elucidating this quest in many letters, aphorisms, and essays. Yet among Klima's fictional texts, the apotheosis of his philosophy is The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, his most acclaimed novel. Ostensibly a series of journal entries, the tale chronicles the descent into madness of Prince Sternenhoch, the German Empire's foremost aristocrat and favorite of Kaiser "Willy." Having become the "lowliest worm" at the hands of his estranged wife, Helga, the Queen of Hells, Sternenhoch eventually attains an ultimate state of bliss and salvation through the most grotesque perversions. Klima explores here the paradoxical nature of pure spirituality with a humor that is as darkly comical as it is obscene. This volume also includes his notorious text "My Autobiography." In a series of journal entries, the novel chronicles the descent into madness of Prince Sternenhoch, who, having become the "lowliest worm" at the hands of his deceased wife Helga, the Queen of Hells, eventually attains an ultimate state of bliss and salvation through the most grotesque form of perversion. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Otto Gutfreund (illustratore). Paperback. Boys & Murderers is the first collection of novellas and stories in English translation from Hermann Ungar, author of the highly-acclaimed novel The Maimed. A writer of unique talent whose life was prematurely ended by illness, he was much admired by Thomas Mann, who prefaces this volume, and known as the "Moravian Dostoevsky" for his analysis of the human psyche. In fiction that is often grotesque and comical, Ungar explores the depravities of the heart and delusions of the mind. Taking Prague as well as his hometown of Boskovice for his settings, he can be located in that illustrious tradition of both Prague German writers (he was associated with Max Brod in the Prague Circle) and Jewish writers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Joseph Roth. Forgotten for decades, Ungar's work has experienced a renaissance over the past years with translations appearing in a number of languages and new editions appearing in German, which has placed among the greats of 20th-century European literature. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A communal apartment in late Soviet-era Moscow. An elderly tenant - the daughter of the apartment's original owner - has disappeared after seeing a ghost. Over the course of a weekend the other occupants meet in the kitchen to argue over who is more deserving of the room she has apparently vacated. If the old woman was murdered, each tenant is a suspect since each would have a motive: the "augmentation of living space." As two of the tenants engage in an extended debate over the nature of evil, they take it upon themselves to solve the mystery and nail the culprit, and it becomes clear that the entire tableau is a reprise of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Displaying a sharp wit and a Gogolian sense of the absurd, Pyetsukh visits anew the age-old debate over the relationship between life and art, arguing that in Russia life imitating literature is as true as literature reflecting life, and the novel strikes a perfect balance between the presentation of philosophical arguments and their discussion in humorous dialogue. A vital work of contemporary Russian prose, The New Moscow Philosophy was immediately translated into many European languages upon its publication in 1989. This is its first English translation. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.