Products

“Cognizant of his impending death, Piglia, the Argentine titan of letters who died of A.L.S. in January, prepared his 327 notebooks for publication in a trilogy…. Splendidly crafted and interspliced with essays and stories, this beguiling work is to a diary as Piglia is to “Emilio Renzi”: a lifelong alter ego, a highly self-conscious shadow volume that brings to bear all of Piglia’s prowess as it illuminates his process of critical reading and the inevitable tensions between art and life.” —Mara Faye Lethem, The New York Times Book Review

A giant of contemporary Latin American literature, Argentine novelist Ricardo Piglia’s secret magnum opus was a compilation of 327 notebooks that he composed over nearly six decades, in which he imagined himself as his literary alter ego, Emilio Renzi. A world-weary detective, Renzi stars in many of his creator's works, much like Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman. But the Renzi of these diaries is something more complex—a multilayered reconstruction of the self that is teased out over intricate, illuminating pages.

As Piglia/Renzi develops as a reader and writer, falls in love, and tussles with his tyrannical father, we get eye-opening perspectives on Latin America’s tumultuous twentieth century. Obsessed with literary giants—from Borges and Cortázar (both of whom he knew), to Kafka and Camus—The Diaries comprise a celebration of reading as a vital, existential activity.

When Piglia learned he had a fatal illness in 2011, he raced to complete his mysterious masterwork as rumors about the book intensified among his many fans. First released in Spanish as a trilogy to tremendous applause, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi cements Piglia’s place in the global canon.

The second installment of Argentine literary giant Ricardo Piglia’s acclaimed bibliophilic trilogy follows his alter ego, Emilio Renzi, as his literary career begins to take off in the tumultuous years 1968-1975—running a magazine, working as a publisher, and encountering the literary stars among whom he would soon take his place: Borges, Puig, Roa Bastos, Piñera.

“One writes,” Ricardo Piglia asserts, only “in order to know literature.” Spanning the years 1968 to 1975, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Happy Years is a testament to Piglia’s intimate, lifelong love affair with the written word. This second installment of the Argentinian master’s diaries opens a window into a luminous literary community fertile with genius and ever-traipsing from bar to bar—as well as into a convulsing Argentina racked by the death of Perón, guerilla warfare, and a bloody military coup—and establishes itself as the definitive backbone of Piglia’s monumental career.

The second installment of Argentine literary giant Ricardo Piglia’s acclaimed bibliophilic trilogy follows his alter ego, Emilio Renzi, as his literary career begins to take off in the tumultuous years 1968-1975—running a magazine, working as a publisher, and encountering the literary stars among whom he would soon take his place: Borges, Puig, Roa Bastos, Piñera.

“One writes,” Ricardo Piglia asserts, only “in order to know literature.” Spanning the years 1968 to 1975, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Happy Years is a testament to Piglia’s intimate, lifelong love affair with the written word. This second installment of the Argentinian master’s diaries opens a window into a luminous literary community fertile with genius and ever-traipsing from bar to bar—as well as into a convulsing Argentina racked by the death of Perón, guerilla warfare, and a bloody military coup—and establishes itself as the definitive backbone of Piglia’s monumental career.

In this deadly-funny debut novel by renowned Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, five macho friends in Rio’s Copacabana reflect on their hedonistic glory days—now supplanted by the indignities of aging—in what turn out to be their final moments.

With uncanny insight into the less virtuous corners of the male psyche, Fernanda Torres brings us five friends who once milked the high life of Rio’s Bossa Nova age and are now left with memories—parties, marriages, divorces, fixations, inhibitions, bad decisions—and the grim realities of getting old. Álvaro lives alone and bemoans the evils of his ex-wife. Sílvio can’t give up the excesses of sex and drugs. Ribeiro is a vain, Viagra-abusing beach bum. Neto is the square, a faithful husband until the end. Ciro is the Don Juan envied by all—but the first to die. Cutting in on these swan songs are the testimonies of those the men seduced, cheated, loved, and abandoned: their wives and children. Edgy, funny, and wise, The End is a candid tropical tragicomedy and an epitaph for a lost generation of machos.

In this deadly-funny debut novel by renowned Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, five macho friends in Rio’s Copacabana reflect on their hedonistic glory days—now supplanted by the indignities of aging—in what turn out to be their final moments.

With uncanny insight into the less virtuous corners of the male psyche, Fernanda Torres brings us five friends who once milked the high life of Rio’s Bossa Nova age and are now left with memories—parties, marriages, divorces, fixations, inhibitions, bad decisions—and the grim realities of getting old. Álvaro lives alone and bemoans the evils of his ex-wife. Sílvio can’t give up the excesses of sex and drugs. Ribeiro is a vain, Viagra-abusing beach bum. Neto is the square, a faithful husband until the end. Ciro is the Don Juan envied by all—but the first to die. Cutting in on these swan songs are the testimonies of those the men seduced, cheated, loved, and abandoned: their wives and children. Edgy, funny, and wise, The End is a candid tropical tragicomedy and an epitaph for a lost generation of machos.

American Book Award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca endured decades in the penal system before becoming a renowned poet and a father. In these collections of strikingly expressive verse, Baca celebrates parenthood and presents, with brutal honesty, the daily complexities of adult life in the age of 9/11 and the Iraq War. This ex-convict, an essential voice in world poetry, chronicles the changes that envelop him upon the arrival of two of his children, Lucia and Esai. After “twenty-five years in the system, brutal, corrupt, hate-filled, and frenzied with violence . . . beatings, shock-therapy, abandonment, terror, death threats, stabbings,” he refuses to give in to evil and despair.

Recalling the works of other poets who passed through the horrors of extreme experience—Nazim Hikmet, Paul Celan, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Wat, Otto René Castillo, and a host of others—The Lucia Poems and The Esai Poems give poignant acknowledgement to one generation’s failings and pass on humane advice to the next. Taken together as Breaking Bread with the Darkness, these two collections offer a poetic primer for paternity, and a model for teaching the young history, politics, spirituality, and survival.

"Brimming with intolerable rapture, I almost killed myself many, many times. I wasn’t trying to; my love for life just kept spilling me over boundaries into places from which some people don’t come back. Hardly restricted by social convention, I hurt myself by being so rambunctious and romantic."

How much of our past does our face betray? What future fortune can you read in the lines and skin? What trace is left by other lips and fingers and fists? In this beautiful, boisterous account, by turns soul-searching and erotic, acclaimed Chicano and Native American poet Jimmy Santiago Baca reveals the story of his life as told through his face. An orphan, a runaway, and an inmate in a maximum-security prison before he became a world-renowned writer, Baca’s life has been touched with rapture and despair, passion and purgatory. “In my eagerness to thrust forth and excel in life,” Baca writes, “I found fame in all the wrong places.”

Presented by Restless Books as part of an ongoing series of succinct essays featuring some of the world’s most distinctive voices, this installment of The Face is Baca’s meditation on the different faces we show the world, and the ways in which the world marks us with its joys and sorrows. With echoes of Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda, Baca speaks for a people alienated by history, in search of their own recognizable faces. The Face is the record of a lasting quest for self-recognition by one of our most distinguished poets.

“Ruth Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, sets herself the task of staring at her face in a mirror for three full, uninterrupted hours; her ruminations ripple out from personal and familial memories to wise and honest meditations on families and aging, race and the body.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

What did your face look like before your parents were born? In The Face: A Time Code, bestselling author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki recounts, in moment-to-moment detail, a profound encounter with memory and the mirror. According to ancient Zen tradition, “your face before your parents were born” is your true face. Who are you? What is your true self? What is your identity before or beyond the dualistic distinctions, like father/mother and good/evil, that define us?

With these questions in mind, Ozeki challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording her thoughts, and noticing every possible detail. Those solitary hours open up a lifetime's worth of meditations on race, aging, family, death, the body, self doubt, and, finally, acceptance. In this lyrical short memoir, Ozeki calls on her experience of growing up in the wake of World War II as a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian American; of having a public face as an author; of studying the intricate art of the Japanese Noh mask; of being ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest; and of her own and her parents’ aging, to paint a rich and utterly unique portrait of a life as told through a face.

Alternately philosophical, funny, personal, political, and poetic, the short memoirs in The Face series offer unique perspectives from some of our favorite writers. Find out more at www.restlessbooks.com/the-face.

“Ruth Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, sets herself the task of staring at her face in a mirror for three full, uninterrupted hours; her ruminations ripple out from personal and familial memories to wise and honest meditations on families and aging, race and the body.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

What did your face look like before your parents were born? In The Face: A Time Code, bestselling author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki recounts, in moment-to-moment detail, a profound encounter with memory and the mirror. According to ancient Zen tradition, “your face before your parents were born” is your true face. Who are you? What is your true self? What is your identity before or beyond the dualistic distinctions, like father/mother and good/evil, that define us?

With these questions in mind, Ozeki challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording her thoughts, and noticing every possible detail. Those solitary hours open up a lifetime's worth of meditations on race, aging, family, death, the body, self doubt, and, finally, acceptance. In this lyrical short memoir, Ozeki calls on her experience of growing up in the wake of World War II as a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian American; of having a public face as an author; of studying the intricate art of the Japanese Noh mask; of being ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest; and of her own and her parents’ aging, to paint a rich and utterly unique portrait of a life as told through a face.

Alternately philosophical, funny, personal, political, and poetic, the short memoirs in The Face series offer unique perspectives from some of our favorite writers. Find out more at www.restlessbooks.com/the-face.

A 2024 Mildred L. Batchelder Award Honoree

A 2024 USBBY Outstanding International Book

One of Kirkus Reviews’ 10 Essential Middle-Grade Books for Fall 2023 — Starred Review

One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Middle-Grade Family Stories of 2023

A 2023 Cybils Awards Finalist for Speculative Middle Grade Fiction

From the author and translator of the Batchelder Award-winning novel Temple Alley Summer comes the moving story of three generations of women adapting to their new home, and its mythical inhabitants, in the tragic aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake disaster.

In the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, Yui, fleeing her violent husband, and Hiyori, a young orphan, are taken in by a strange but kind old lady named Kiwa in the small town of Kitsunezaki​​. The newly formed family finds refuge in a mayoiga, a lost house, perched atop a beautiful cape overlooking the sea. While helping to rebuild Kitsunezaki, the three adapt to their new lives and supernatural new home, slowly healing from their troubled pasts. Kiwa regales Yui and Hiyori with local legends—from the shapeshifting fox-woman who used to roam the mountains, to the demon Agamé and a sea snake who once terrorized the townspeople, preying upon their grief and fears until they trapped the snake and the demon’s claws in an underwater cave.

But when mysterious and sinister events start happening around town, the three fear the worst. Did the earthquake release Agamé and the sea snake into the world again? Kiwa, Yui, and Hiyori join forces with a merry band of kappa river spirits, a bold zashiki warashi house spirit, and flying Jizō guardian statues to save their new family and home and banish Agamé and the snake once and for all. Now a hit anime film, The House of the Lost on the Cape is a heartwarming tale about the strength of family and friendship in the face of natural and mythical forces.

A 2024 Mildred L. Batchelder Award Honoree

A 2024 USBBY Outstanding International Book

One of Kirkus Reviews’ 10 Essential Middle-Grade Books for Fall 2023 — Starred Review

One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Middle-Grade Family Stories of 2023

A 2023 Cybils Awards Finalist for Speculative Middle Grade Fiction

From the author and translator of the Batchelder Award-winning novel Temple Alley Summer comes the moving story of three generations of women adapting to their new home, and its mythical inhabitants, in the tragic aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake disaster.

In the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, Yui, fleeing her violent husband, and Hiyori, a young orphan, are taken in by a strange but kind old lady named Kiwa in the small town of Kitsunezaki​​. The newly formed family finds refuge in a mayoiga, a lost house, perched atop a beautiful cape overlooking the sea. While helping to rebuild Kitsunezaki, the three adapt to their new lives and supernatural new home, slowly healing from their troubled pasts. Kiwa regales Yui and Hiyori with local legends—from the shapeshifting fox-woman who used to roam the mountains, to the demon Agamé and a sea snake who once terrorized the townspeople, preying upon their grief and fears until they trapped the snake and the demon’s claws in an underwater cave.

But when mysterious and sinister events start happening around town, the three fear the worst. Did the earthquake release Agamé and the sea snake into the world again? Kiwa, Yui, and Hiyori join forces with a merry band of kappa river spirits, a bold zashiki warashi house spirit, and flying Jizō guardian statues to save their new family and home and banish Agamé and the snake once and for all. Now a hit anime film, The House of the Lost on the Cape is a heartwarming tale about the strength of family and friendship in the face of natural and mythical forces.

A 2024 USBBY Outstanding International Book

From beloved Finland-based children’s author Anna Anisimova comes a heartwarming, beautifully illustrated chapter book about a blind girl who joyfully explores her environment using her senses and vivid imagination, inviting young readers to understand their surroundings in entirely new ways.

For the young, blind heroine of The Invisible Elephant, the world is a thrilling place full of sounds, smells, and sensations. Although she doesn’t see the world outside with her eyes, nothing stops her from encountering her surroundings with joy and an impressively creative imagination. In four charming stories, we go with her to the zoo, the museum, and art class, and get a peek into her wonderfully magical mind where her grandfather's walking stick can transform into a horse and a sled can become a whale. When the time comes for her to learn braille, we watch how her family and friends cheer her on as she discovers how to navigate the world in her own way.

With gorgeous, inventive illustrations by Yulia Sidneva and artfully translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, The Invisible Elephant is a truly special book that helps kids to value all the different ways of seeing the world.

A 2024 USBBY Outstanding International Book

From beloved Finland-based children’s author Anna Anisimova comes a heartwarming, beautifully illustrated chapter book about a blind girl who joyfully explores her environment using her senses and vivid imagination, inviting young readers to understand their surroundings in entirely new ways.

For the young, blind heroine of The Invisible Elephant, the world is a thrilling place full of sounds, smells, and sensations. Although she doesn’t see the world outside with her eyes, nothing stops her from encountering her surroundings with joy and an impressively creative imagination. In four charming stories, we go with her to the zoo, the museum, and art class, and get a peek into her wonderfully magical mind where her grandfather's walking stick can transform into a horse and a sled can become a whale. When the time comes for her to learn braille, we watch how her family and friends cheer her on as she discovers how to navigate the world in her own way.

With gorgeous, inventive illustrations by Yulia Sidneva and artfully translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, The Invisible Elephant is a truly special book that helps kids to value all the different ways of seeing the world.

The Israeli Republic "suggests how the Iranian and Israeli leaders who feel such intense mutual hostility today actually mirror one another in certain ways, particularly in their foundational attitudes toward religious authority, political and economic populism and the West. That a writer such as Al-e Ahmad, guru to the ayatollahs, liked Israel now seems touching. What he liked about Israel seems cautionary." —Bernard Avishai, Foreign Affairs

Written by a preeminent Iranian writer who helped lay the popular groundwork for the Iranian Revolution, The Israeli Republic should be required reading for anyone interested in the history and current political landscape of the Middle East. Documenting Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s two-week-long trip to Israel in February of 1963, his account “Journey to the Land of Israel” caused a firestorm when it was published in Iran, upsetting the very revolutionary clerics whose anti-Western sentiments Al-e Ahmad himself had fueled. Yet, in the thriving Jewish State, Jalal Al-e Ahmad saw a model for a possible future Iran.

Based on his controversial travelogue, supplemented with letters between the author and his wife, Simin Daneshvar (the first major Iranian woman novelist), and translated into English for the first time, The Israeli Republic is a record of Al-e Ahmad’s idealism, insight, and ultimate disillusionment toward Israel. Vibrantly modern in its sensibility and fearlessly polemical, this book will change the way you think about the Middle East.

The Israeli Republic "suggests how the Iranian and Israeli leaders who feel such intense mutual hostility today actually mirror one another in certain ways, particularly in their foundational attitudes toward religious authority, political and economic populism and the West. That a writer such as Al-e Ahmad, guru to the ayatollahs, liked Israel now seems touching. What he liked about Israel seems cautionary." —Bernard Avishai, Foreign Affairs

Written by a preeminent Iranian writer who helped lay the popular groundwork for the Iranian Revolution, The Israeli Republic should be required reading for anyone interested in the history and current political landscape of the Middle East. Documenting Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s two-week-long trip to Israel in February of 1963, his account “Journey to the Land of Israel” caused a firestorm when it was published in Iran, upsetting the very revolutionary clerics whose anti-Western sentiments Al-e Ahmad himself had fueled. Yet, in the thriving Jewish State, Jalal Al-e Ahmad saw a model for a possible future Iran.

Based on his controversial travelogue, supplemented with letters between the author and his wife, Simin Daneshvar (the first major Iranian woman novelist), and translated into English for the first time, The Israeli Republic is a record of Al-e Ahmad’s idealism, insight, and ultimate disillusionment toward Israel. Vibrantly modern in its sensibility and fearlessly polemical, this book will change the way you think about the Middle East.

Introduced by beloved Cuban science fiction author Yoss as one of the foundational novels of the genre, Miguel Collazo’s 1960s classic The Journey is a mind-opening parable of social progress, prophets and reluctant masses, and humanity’s metaphysical voyage inward.

On planet Ambar, long ago colonized by scientists who arrived by spaceship, inhabitants no longer live in cities. Generation after generation, Ambarians wander through the desert, the valley, and the ruins as the mysterious “symbols” loom in the sky. Once a new generation develops the ability to broadcast images, feelings and memories to others, they start to hope and wait for a life-changing transformation: The Journey.

Filled with intricate family trees, huge desert flowers, and intelligent automatons, Miguel Collazo’s evocative world traces the makings of a civilization that has lost its way and gradually rebuilds itself in a desolate landscape. This multi-generational saga highlights what binds us together as a community and the roles that memory, affection, and hope play in our history.

One of what Cuban science fiction great Daína Chaviano calls the “hexagon of top-notch, almost inimitable Cuban books of the genre,” The Journey is essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of Cuban literature and science fiction.

A year spent at the precipice of severe climate change in oceanfront Spain.

The Last House Before the Sea is the magnificent result of a year lived on the island of Buda, contemplating the passing of the seasons, the marshes, the seabirds, and a relentless horizon. In its pages, Gabi Martínez stitches scenes of the natural world alongside the day-to-day lives of this unique island's residents, many of whom have called it home for generations. But something disrupts the slow rhythms of eel fishing, rice farming, and the Ebro River's flow to the coast. Something is shifting.

As climate change tilts the scales of a fragile coexistence, and rising sea levels threaten to swallow their homes, the island's locals must reconcile their past and future—both beholden to a region that grows more endangered with each passing day.

A year spent at the precipice of severe climate change in oceanfront Spain.

The Last House Before the Sea is the magnificent result of a year lived on the island of Buda, contemplating the passing of the seasons, the marshes, the seabirds, and a relentless horizon. In its pages, Gabi Martínez stitches scenes of the natural world alongside the day-to-day lives of this unique island's residents, many of whom have called it home for generations. But something disrupts the slow rhythms of eel fishing, rice farming, and the Ebro River's flow to the coast. Something is shifting.

As climate change tilts the scales of a fragile coexistence, and rising sea levels threaten to swallow their homes, the island's locals must reconcile their past and future—both beholden to a region that grows more endangered with each passing day.

American Book Award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca endured decades in the penal system before becoming a renowned poet and a father. In these collections of strikingly expressive verse, Baca celebrates parenthood and presents, with brutal honesty, the daily complexities of adult life in the age of 9/11 and the Iraq War. This ex-convict, an essential voice in world poetry, chronicles the changes that envelop him upon the arrival of two of his children, Lucia and Esai. After “twenty-five years in the system, brutal, corrupt, hate-filled, and frenzied with violence . . . beatings, shock-therapy, abandonment, terror, death threats, stabbings,” he refuses to give in to evil and despair.

Recalling the works of other poets who passed through the horrors of extreme experience—Nazim Hikmet, Paul Celan, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Wat, Otto René Castillo, and a host of others—The Lucia Poems and The Esai Poems give poignant acknowledgement to one generation’s failings and pass on humane advice to the next. Taken together as Breaking Bread with the Darkness, these two collections offer a poetic primer for paternity, and a model for teaching the young history, politics, spirituality, and survival.

A rediscovered classic, and the only known novel by Black abolitionist and political exile Louis Timagène Houat, The Maroons is a fervid account of slavery and escape on nineteenth-century Réunion Island.

Frême is a young African man forced into slavery on Réunion, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Plagued by memories of his childhood sweetheart, a white woman named Marie, Frême seeks her out—but when they are persecuted for their love, the two flee into the forest. There they meet other “maroons”: formerly enslaved people and courageous rebels who have chosen freedom at the risk of their lives.

Now available in English for the first time, The Maroons highlights slavery’s abject conditions under the French empire, and attests to the widespread phenomenon of enslaved people escaping captivity to forge a new life beyond the reach of so-called “civilization.” Banned by colonial authorities at the time of its publication in 1844, the book fell into obscurity for over a century before its rediscovery in the 1970s. Since its first reissue, the novel has been recognized for its extraordinary historical significance and literary quality.

Presented here in a sensitive translation by Aqiil Gopee with Jeffrey Diteman, and with a keen introduction by journalist and author Shenaz Patel, The Maroons is a vital resource for rethinking the nineteenth-century canon, and a fascinating read on the struggle for freedom and social justice.

A rediscovered classic, and the only known novel by Black abolitionist and political exile Louis Timagène Houat, The Maroons is a fervid account of slavery and escape on nineteenth-century Réunion Island.

Frême is a young African man forced into slavery on Réunion, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Plagued by memories of his childhood sweetheart, a white woman named Marie, Frême seeks her out—but when they are persecuted for their love, the two flee into the forest. There they meet other “maroons”: formerly enslaved people and courageous rebels who have chosen freedom at the risk of their lives.

Now available in English for the first time, The Maroons highlights slavery’s abject conditions under the French empire, and attests to the widespread phenomenon of enslaved people escaping captivity to forge a new life beyond the reach of so-called “civilization.” Banned by colonial authorities at the time of its publication in 1844, the book fell into obscurity for over a century before its rediscovery in the 1970s. Since its first reissue, the novel has been recognized for its extraordinary historical significance and literary quality.

Presented here in a sensitive translation by Aqiil Gopee with Jeffrey Diteman, and with a keen introduction by journalist and author Shenaz Patel, The Maroons is a vital resource for rethinking the nineteenth-century canon, and a fascinating read on the struggle for freedom and social justice.

“A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present” (The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice), Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster is a harrowing parable of a young historian who becomes consumed by the memory of the Holocaust.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2020 SELECTION

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed narrator recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II and guides tours through the sites for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims’ lives.

The job becomes a mission, and then an obsession. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the genocide committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers—their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill.

With the perspicuity of Kafka’s The Trial and the obsessions of Delillo’s White Noise, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honor the memory of horror without becoming consumed by it?

“A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present” (The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice), Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster is a harrowing parable of a young historian who becomes consumed by the memory of the Holocaust.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2020 SELECTION

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed narrator recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II and guides tours through the sites for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims’ lives.

The job becomes a mission, and then an obsession. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the genocide committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers—their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill.

With the perspicuity of Kafka’s The Trial and the obsessions of Delillo’s White Noise, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honor the memory of horror without becoming consumed by it?

“A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present” (The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice), Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster is a harrowing parable of a young historian who becomes consumed by the memory of the Holocaust.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2020 SELECTION

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed narrator recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II and guides tours through the sites for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims’ lives.

The job becomes a mission, and then an obsession. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the genocide committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers—their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill.

With the perspicuity of Kafka’s The Trial and the obsessions of Delillo’s White Noise, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honor the memory of horror without becoming consumed by it?

The Mermaid in the Bathtub is a charming, gorgeously retro retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic story “The Little Mermaid,” by beloved Israeli author and illustrator duo Nurit Zarchi and Rutu Modan.

One day, a resolutely ordinary young man named Mr. Whatwilltheysay returns home to find Grain-of-Sand, a mermaid, waiting for him in his favorite armchair. Despite his objections, the two embark on a series of very watery adventures as he tries to get rid of her. But ultimately the thought of being seen with half a fish is simply too much for Mr. Whatwilltheysay to bear—what would people say? So broken-hearted Grain-of-Sand returns to the sea in his bathtub, leaving Mr. Whatwilltheysay to resume his pedestrian existence. Mr. Whatwilltheysay soon finds that his beloved landlubber life, however, lacks the splash and shimmer (and bathtub) of his good times with Grain-of-Sand—and acting against all his instincts, he sets off to sea to find her.

The Mermaid in the Bathtub is a charming, gorgeously retro retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic story “The Little Mermaid,” by beloved Israeli author and illustrator duo Nurit Zarchi and Rutu Modan.

One day, a resolutely ordinary young man named Mr. Whatwilltheysay returns home to find Grain-of-Sand, a mermaid, waiting for him in his favorite armchair. Despite his objections, the two embark on a series of very watery adventures as he tries to get rid of her. But ultimately the thought of being seen with half a fish is simply too much for Mr. Whatwilltheysay to bear—what would people say? So broken-hearted Grain-of-Sand returns to the sea in his bathtub, leaving Mr. Whatwilltheysay to resume his pedestrian existence. Mr. Whatwilltheysay soon finds that his beloved landlubber life, however, lacks the splash and shimmer (and bathtub) of his good times with Grain-of-Sand—and acting against all his instincts, he sets off to sea to find her.

Award-winning journalist Javier Sinay investigates a series of murders from the nineteenth century, unearthing the complex history and legacy of Moisés Ville, the “Jerusalem of South America,” and his personal connection to a defining period of Jewish history in Argentina.When Argentine journalist Javier Sinay discovers an article from 1947 by his great-grandfather detailing twenty-two murders that had occurred in Moisés Ville at the end of the nineteenth century, he launches into his own investigation that soon turns into something deeper: an exploration of the history of Moisés Ville, one of the first Jewish agricultural communities in Argentina, and Sinay’s own connection to this historically thriving Jewish epicenter.

Seeking refuge from the pogroms of Czarist Russia, a group of Jewish immigrants founded Moisés Ville in the late 1880s. Like their town’s prophetic namesake, these immigrants fled one form of persecution only to encounter a different set of hardships: exploitative land prices, starvation, illness, language barriers, and a series of murders perpetrated by roving gauchos who preyed upon their vulnerability. Sinay, though a descendant of these immigrants, is unfamiliar with this turbulent history, and his research into the spate of violence plunges him into his family’s past and their link to Moisés Ville. He combs through libraries and archives in search of documents about the murders and hires a book detective to track down issues of Der Viderkol, the first Yiddish newspaper in Argentina started by his great-grandfather. He even enrolls in Yiddish classes so he can read the newspaper and other contemporaneous records for himself. Through interviews with his family members, current residents of Moisés Ville, historians, and archivists, Sinay compiles moving portraits of the victims of these heinous murders and reveals the fascinating and complex history of the town once known as the “Jerusalem of South America.”

“Sinay acknowledges the impossibility of fully separating legends from facts. . . but his diligence has produced as definitive an account as possible of what actually happened during this bloody period. This nuanced search for truth should have broad appeal.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"I greatly admire Javier Sinay's enlightening and humane account of his sleuthing—the disinterment of a violent episode of buried history—now no longer forgotten. Its implications resonate far beyond the borders of Argentina."
—Paul Theroux, author of The Mosquito Coast and Under the Wave at Waimea

"Part detective story, part family history, The Murders of Moisés Ville: The Rise and Fall of the Jerusalem of South America — by Buenos Aires journalist Javier Sinay— offers a compelling path to learn more."

—Howard Freedman, Jewish News of Northern California

“In the pursuit to understand his own past, while unraveling the mysteries surrounding Moisés Ville, Javier Sinay has created an unflinching portrait of the first Jewish community in Argentina, who, despite enormous challenges, life-threatening privations, and demeaning persecution, endured to pave the way for others seeking a new life in Argentina…Sinay has demonstrated once again, that history must be preserved no matter the cost – for ourselves, as well as for future generations.”

—Stephen Newton, Litro Magazine

“ What begins as an exercise in historical sleuthing evolves into a more ambitious exploration of Argentine Jewish history and identity…Sinay doesn’t need to create a direct connection to this tragic present. It is more than enough that he refuses to flatten the Moisés Ville murders to fit a totalizing narrative of antisemitic violence in Argentina. In so doing, he not only rejects facile conceptions of Jewish victimhood, but also defies the Zionist idea that, by virtue of having suffered in one country, Jews are automatically entitled to land in another.”

—Lily Meyer, Jewish Currents

Award-winning journalist Javier Sinay investigates a series of murders from the nineteenth century, unearthing the complex history and legacy of Moisés Ville, the “Jerusalem of South America,” and his personal connection to a defining period of Jewish history in Argentina.When Argentine journalist Javier Sinay discovers an article from 1947 by his great-grandfather detailing twenty-two murders that had occurred in Moisés Ville at the end of the nineteenth century, he launches into his own investigation that soon turns into something deeper: an exploration of the history of Moisés Ville, one of the first Jewish agricultural communities in Argentina, and Sinay’s own connection to this historically thriving Jewish epicenter.

Seeking refuge from the pogroms of Czarist Russia, a group of Jewish immigrants founded Moisés Ville in the late 1880s. Like their town’s prophetic namesake, these immigrants fled one form of persecution only to encounter a different set of hardships: exploitative land prices, starvation, illness, language barriers, and a series of murders perpetrated by roving gauchos who preyed upon their vulnerability. Sinay, though a descendant of these immigrants, is unfamiliar with this turbulent history, and his research into the spate of violence plunges him into his family’s past and their link to Moisés Ville. He combs through libraries and archives in search of documents about the murders and hires a book detective to track down issues of Der Viderkol, the first Yiddish newspaper in Argentina started by his great-grandfather. He even enrolls in Yiddish classes so he can read the newspaper and other contemporaneous records for himself. Through interviews with his family members, current residents of Moisés Ville, historians, and archivists, Sinay compiles moving portraits of the victims of these heinous murders and reveals the fascinating and complex history of the town once known as the “Jerusalem of South America.”

“Sinay acknowledges the impossibility of fully separating legends from facts. . . but his diligence has produced as definitive an account as possible of what actually happened during this bloody period. This nuanced search for truth should have broad appeal.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"I greatly admire Javier Sinay's enlightening and humane account of his sleuthing—the disinterment of a violent episode of buried history—now no longer forgotten. Its implications resonate far beyond the borders of Argentina."
—Paul Theroux, author of The Mosquito Coast and Under the Wave at Waimea

"Part detective story, part family history, The Murders of Moisés Ville: The Rise and Fall of the Jerusalem of South America — by Buenos Aires journalist Javier Sinay— offers a compelling path to learn more."

—Howard Freedman, Jewish News of Northern California

“In the pursuit to understand his own past, while unraveling the mysteries surrounding Moisés Ville, Javier Sinay has created an unflinching portrait of the first Jewish community in Argentina, who, despite enormous challenges, life-threatening privations, and demeaning persecution, endured to pave the way for others seeking a new life in Argentina…Sinay has demonstrated once again, that history must be preserved no matter the cost – for ourselves, as well as for future generations.”

—Stephen Newton, Litro Magazine

“ What begins as an exercise in historical sleuthing evolves into a more ambitious exploration of Argentine Jewish history and identity…Sinay doesn’t need to create a direct connection to this tragic present. It is more than enough that he refuses to flatten the Moisés Ville murders to fit a totalizing narrative of antisemitic violence in Argentina. In so doing, he not only rejects facile conceptions of Jewish victimhood, but also defies the Zionist idea that, by virtue of having suffered in one country, Jews are automatically entitled to land in another.”

—Lily Meyer, Jewish Currents

“In the steppe near Tashkent they came upon a never-ending ladder with wooden rungs and iron rails and that stretched across the earth from horizon to horizon ... Whistling and thundering, a snake-like wonder hurtled past them, packed both on the inside and on top with infidels shouting and waving their hands. ‘The End of the World!’ thought both Mahmud-Hodja the Sunni and Djebral the Shiite.”

Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colorful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars, and Gypsies.

At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station—a source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond the town. Rich and picaresque, The Railway is full of color. Sophisticated yet with a naive delight in storytelling, it chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.

From best-selling Brazilian novelist Patrícia Melo comes a genre-defying tale of women in the Amazon and their reckoning with brutal oppression—by turns poetic, humorous, dark, and inspiring.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman vividly conjures the epidemic of femicide in Brazil, the power women can hold in the face of overwhelming male violence, the resilience of community despite state-sponsored degradation, and the potential of the jungle to save us all.

To escape her newly aggressive lover, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about the rampant attacks on the region’s women, which have grown so commonplace that the cases quickly fill her large notebook. What she finds in the jungle is not only persistent racism, patriarchy, and deforestation, but a deep longing for answers to her enigmatic past. Through the ritual use of ayahuasca, she meets a chorus of Icamiabas, warrior women bent on vengeance—and gradually, she recovers the details of her own mother’s early death.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman resists categorization: it is a series of prose poems lamenting the real-life women murdered by so many men in Brazil; a personal search for history, truth, and belonging; and a modern, exacting, and sometimes fantastical take on very old problems that, despite our better selves, dog us the world over.

From best-selling Brazilian novelist Patrícia Melo comes a genre-defying tale of women in the Amazon and their reckoning with brutal oppression—by turns poetic, humorous, dark, and inspiring.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman vividly conjures the epidemic of femicide in Brazil, the power women can hold in the face of overwhelming male violence, the resilience of community despite state-sponsored degradation, and the potential of the jungle to save us all.

To escape her newly aggressive lover, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about the rampant attacks on the region’s women, which have grown so commonplace that the cases quickly fill her large notebook. What she finds in the jungle is not only persistent racism, patriarchy, and deforestation, but a deep longing for answers to her enigmatic past. Through the ritual use of ayahuasca, she meets a chorus of Icamiabas, warrior women bent on vengeance—and gradually, she recovers the details of her own mother’s early death.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman resists categorization: it is a series of prose poems lamenting the real-life women murdered by so many men in Brazil; a personal search for history, truth, and belonging; and a modern, exacting, and sometimes fantastical take on very old problems that, despite our better selves, dog us the world over.

From Alejandro Jodorowsky—the legendary director of The Holy Mountain, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, and author of Where the Bird Sings Best—comes another autobiographical tour-de-force: a mythopoetic portrait of the artist as a young man in Chile in the tumultuous 1930s.

In Where the Bird Sings Best, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s visionary autobiographical novel that NPR compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude and called “a genius’s surreal vision brought to life,” we followed Jodorowsky’s predecessors as they fled to Chile amid a fantastical array of circuses, Tarot, Catholic and Jewish mysticism, sexual extravagance, political violence, and the ghost of a wise rabbi serving as advisor. Now, in The Son of Black Thursday, Jodorowsky himself takes the stage as we’re introduced to the unforgettable cast of his early years in Chile in the 1930s.

We follow his father, Jaime, who’s obsessed with assassinating the dictator he ends up serving; his mother, Sarah, a giantess who never speaks but communicates through operatic singing; his grandparents, Ukrainian Jewish exiles fleeing persecution in the Ukraine; his twin sister, who is made to suckle a mannequin until she is ten in order to silence her delirious speeches; among other creatures of every description as they struggle against the misery and oppression of the copper mines of the Chilean desert.

As he’s done across media from film to comics to mystic philosophy to fiction, Jodorowsky once again demonstrates his boundless capacity for creating a universe of wonder, horror, humor, magic, and cosmic truth beyond our wildest imaginings. The Son of Black Thursday is a gripping novel from one of our most treasured masters.

From Alejandro Jodorowsky—the legendary director of The Holy Mountain, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, and author of Where the Bird Sings Best—comes another autobiographical tour-de-force: a mythopoetic portrait of the artist as a young man in Chile in the tumultuous 1930s.

In Where the Bird Sings Best, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s visionary autobiographical novel that NPR compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude and called “a genius’s surreal vision brought to life,” we followed Jodorowsky’s predecessors as they fled to Chile amid a fantastical array of circuses, Tarot, Catholic and Jewish mysticism, sexual extravagance, political violence, and the ghost of a wise rabbi serving as advisor. Now, in The Son of Black Thursday, Jodorowsky himself takes the stage as we’re introduced to the unforgettable cast of his early years in Chile in the 1930s.

We follow his father, Jaime, who’s obsessed with assassinating the dictator he ends up serving; his mother, Sarah, a giantess who never speaks but communicates through operatic singing; his grandparents, Ukrainian Jewish exiles fleeing persecution in the Ukraine; his twin sister, who is made to suckle a mannequin until she is ten in order to silence her delirious speeches; among other creatures of every description as they struggle against the misery and oppression of the copper mines of the Chilean desert.

As he’s done across media from film to comics to mystic philosophy to fiction, Jodorowsky once again demonstrates his boundless capacity for creating a universe of wonder, horror, humor, magic, and cosmic truth beyond our wildest imaginings. The Son of Black Thursday is a gripping novel from one of our most treasured masters.

Restless Classics presents The Souls of Black Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal work of sociology, with searing insights into our complex, corrosive relationship with race and the African-American consciousness. Reconsidered for the era of Obama, Trump, and Black Lives Matter, the new edition includes an incisive introduction from rising cultural critic Vann R. Newkirk II and stunning illustrations by the artist Steve Prince.

Published in 1903, exactly forty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk fell into the hands of an American nation that had still not yet found “peace from its sins.” With such deep disappointment among African-Americans still awaiting full emancipation, Du Bois believed that the moderate and conciliatory efforts of civil-rights leader Booker T. Washington could only go so far. Taking to the page, Du Bois produced a resounding declaration on the rights of the American man and laid out an agenda that was at the time radical but has since proven prophetic. In fourteen chapters that move fluidly between historical and sociological essays, song and poetry, personal recollection and fiction, The Souls of Black Folk frames “the color line” as the central problem of the twentieth century and tries to answer the question, “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?” Striking in his psychological precision as well as his political foresight, Du Bois advanced ithe influential ideas of “double-consciousness”—an inner conflict created by the seemingly irreconcilable “black” and “American” identities—and “the veil,” through which African-Americans must see a spectrum of economic, social, and political opportunities entirely differently from their white counterparts’.

Now, over fifty years after Du Bois’s death and the Civil Rights Act, we need this seminal work more urgently than ever. Long overdue for reconsideration, it is the latest installment of Restless Classics, featuring illustrations by master printmaker Steve Prince and a new introduction by Atlantic staff writer Vann R. Newkirk II.

Restless Classics presents The Souls of Black Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal work of sociology, with searing insights into our complex, corrosive relationship with race and the African-American consciousness. Reconsidered for the era of Obama, Trump, and Black Lives Matter, the new edition includes an incisive introduction from rising cultural critic Vann R. Newkirk II and stunning illustrations by the artist Steve Prince.

Published in 1903, exactly forty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk fell into the hands of an American nation that had still not yet found “peace from its sins.” With such deep disappointment among African-Americans still awaiting full emancipation, Du Bois believed that the moderate and conciliatory efforts of civil-rights leader Booker T. Washington could only go so far. Taking to the page, Du Bois produced a resounding declaration on the rights of the American man and laid out an agenda that was at the time radical but has since proven prophetic. In fourteen chapters that move fluidly between historical and sociological essays, song and poetry, personal recollection and fiction, The Souls of Black Folk frames “the color line” as the central problem of the twentieth century and tries to answer the question, “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?” Striking in his psychological precision as well as his political foresight, Du Bois advanced ithe influential ideas of “double-consciousness”—an inner conflict created by the seemingly irreconcilable “black” and “American” identities—and “the veil,” through which African-Americans must see a spectrum of economic, social, and political opportunities entirely differently from their white counterparts’.

Now, over fifty years after Du Bois’s death and the Civil Rights Act, we need this seminal work more urgently than ever. Long overdue for reconsideration, it is the latest installment of Restless Classics, featuring illustrations by master printmaker Steve Prince and a new introduction by Atlantic staff writer Vann R. Newkirk II.

The Spines of Love collects work from Víctor Terán’s poetic oeuvre for the first time in a trilingual edition: in their original Isthmus Zapotec (an endangered indigenous Mexican language) and in David Shook’s Spanish and English translations. Sensual and intricately wrought, these poems take readers on an emotional journey through love and loss with a searing lyricism entirely Terán’s own. His lover’s body is a city where the poet can “give perfect directions,” her name slips over his tongue “like a fish between the hands / of a fisherman,” and when she leaves him it’s with memories like “an ocean of incessant fish.”

The Spines of Love stands for a simple but bracing truth: Yes, love can hurt, but even after it departs, it strengthens us.

After the death of her husband, Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days—gardening, cooking, spending time with her neighbors and family in Karachi—is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and, at times, impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to reconsider her past with Akbar Ahmad, and envision the future she wishes to make with her new suitor. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something so new and essential, he also exposes her to the danger of transgressing old traditions.

The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society whose conventions constrain men and, particularly, women. Gently humorous, profoundly perceptive, and exceedingly clever in its cultural critique, The Story of a Widow is Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s modern answer to the Victorian novel.

Who will rule the Holy Land, and at what cost?

In a near-future Jerusalem, harrowing omens plague the city: a desecrated altar, an unbearable stench, a rampant famine. Shaken but devout, Jonathan, the royal family’s third son, continues to hold services and offer animal sacrifices at the prophesied Third Temple, built to consecrate the founding of the new Kingdom of Judah. His father, Israel’s self-appointed king, has abolished the Supreme Court. The Torah is the law of the land, and only people of the Jewish faith are allowed in. When war breaks out and an angel of God begins to torment Jonathan, warning him of his father’s sacrilege, the foundations of the young priest’s faith—and then his world—begin to give way.

Winner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize, The Third Temple plunges readers into a tempest of fanaticism, betrayal, and destruction. Where does the power of man end and the power of God begin? With chilling resonance, this vivid novel from one of Israel’s leading authors sounds an unforgettable warning amidst rising extremism.

Who will rule the Holy Land, and at what cost?

In a near-future Jerusalem, harrowing omens plague the city: a desecrated altar, an unbearable stench, a rampant famine. Shaken but devout, Jonathan, the royal family’s third son, continues to hold services and offer animal sacrifices at the prophesied Third Temple, built to consecrate the founding of the new Kingdom of Judah. His father, Israel’s self-appointed king, has abolished the Supreme Court. The Torah is the law of the land, and only people of the Jewish faith are allowed in. When war breaks out and an angel of God begins to torment Jonathan, warning him of his father’s sacrilege, the foundations of the young priest’s faith—and then his world—begin to give way.

Winner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize, The Third Temple plunges readers into a tempest of fanaticism, betrayal, and destruction. Where does the power of man end and the power of God begin? With chilling resonance, this vivid novel from one of Israel’s leading authors sounds an unforgettable warning amidst rising extremism.

Winner of the 2020 Mauricio Achar Award

Does evil lurk in the shadows of the forest or within the human heart? Eduardo Sangarcía’s tale of one woman’s trial opens the door to deeper horrors.

Anna Thalberg is a villager shunned for her red hair and provocative beauty, so when she is dragged from her home and accused of witchcraft, her neighbors do not intervene. Only Klaus, her husband, and Father Friedrich, a priest experiencing a crisis of faith, set out to Würzburg to prove her innocence. There, locked in a prison tower, Anna faces isolation and torture while anxiety builds over strange happenings within the city walls. Can the two men convince the Church inquisitors to release Anna, or will she burn at the stake?

The Trial of Anna Thalberg is a tale of religious persecution, superstition, and suffering during the Protestant Reformation. While mapping the medieval fear of occultism and demons, it delves into enduring human concerns: the oppression of women, the inhumanity of institutions, and the question of God’s existence. Frantic in pace and experimental in form, this is an unforgettable debut from Mexican author Eduardo Sangarcía.

Winner of the 2020 Mauricio Achar Award

Does evil lurk in the shadows of the forest or within the human heart? Eduardo Sangarcía’s tale of one woman’s trial opens the door to deeper horrors.

Anna Thalberg is a villager shunned for her red hair and provocative beauty, so when she is dragged from her home and accused of witchcraft, her neighbors do not intervene. Only Klaus, her husband, and Father Friedrich, a priest experiencing a crisis of faith, set out to Würzburg to prove her innocence. There, locked in a prison tower, Anna faces isolation and torture while anxiety builds over strange happenings within the city walls. Can the two men convince the Church inquisitors to release Anna, or will she burn at the stake?

The Trial of Anna Thalberg is a tale of religious persecution, superstition, and suffering during the Protestant Reformation. While mapping the medieval fear of occultism and demons, it delves into enduring human concerns: the oppression of women, the inhumanity of institutions, and the question of God’s existence. Frantic in pace and experimental in form, this is an unforgettable debut from Mexican author Eduardo Sangarcía.

Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century,” The Underground is the unforgettable story of an abandoned mixed-race boy navigating the wondrous and terrifying city of Moscow before the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“I am Moscow’s underground son, the result of one too many nights on the town.” So begins the story of Mbobo, the precocious 12-year-old narrator of this captivating novel by exiled Uzbek author and BBC journalist Hamid Ismailov. Born to a Siberian woman and an African athlete who came to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Mbobo must navigate the complexities of being a fatherless, mixed-raced boy in the shaky terrain of the Soviet Union before its collapse.

With echoes of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Ismailov’s novel tackles head-on the problems of race and the relationship between the individual and society in a thoroughly modern context. While paying homage to great Russian authors of the past—Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gorky, Nabokov, and Pushkin—Ismailov emerges as a master of a new kind of Russian writing that revels in the sordid reality and diversity of the country today. Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century" (Continent Magazine), The Underground is a dizzying and moving tour of the Soviet capital, on the surface and beneath, before its colossal fall.

Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century,” The Underground is the unforgettable story of an abandoned mixed-race boy navigating the wondrous and terrifying city of Moscow before the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“I am Moscow’s underground son, the result of one too many nights on the town.” So begins the story of Mbobo, the precocious 12-year-old narrator of this captivating novel by exiled Uzbek author and BBC journalist Hamid Ismailov. Born to a Siberian woman and an African athlete who came to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Mbobo must navigate the complexities of being a fatherless, mixed-raced boy in the shaky terrain of the Soviet Union before its collapse.

With echoes of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Ismailov’s novel tackles head-on the problems of race and the relationship between the individual and society in a thoroughly modern context. While paying homage to great Russian authors of the past—Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gorky, Nabokov, and Pushkin—Ismailov emerges as a master of a new kind of Russian writing that revels in the sordid reality and diversity of the country today. Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century" (Continent Magazine), The Underground is a dizzying and moving tour of the Soviet capital, on the surface and beneath, before its colossal fall.

"Kashiwaba's novel is indeed transporting. . . . Pick up this book and be spirited away." — Gregory Maguire, The New York Times

From the bestselling, Batchelder Award-winning author and translator of Temple Alley Summer and The House of the Lost on the Cape comes the fantastic adventure that first inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved film, Spirited Away.

Lina’s father had suggested she go "someplace different" for the summer, and she's beginning to wish she hadn’t listened. She could be at her grandma’s house in Nagano now, instead of trudging through a forest in search of a town that might not even exist. But when a gust of wind carries off her umbrella, it leads Lina down a secret path between the trees to a strange and incredible world. In the hidden village of Misty Valley, centaurs roam the cobblestone streets and gnomes visit shops stuffed with spellbooks and enchanted desserts. All magic has a dark side, though, and sometimes even sorcerers need a human’s helping hand.

Now, fifty years after its debut and decades of blockbuster success in Japan, Sachiko Kashiwaba’s acclaimed novel is available in English and certain to delight readers of all ages.

"Kashiwaba's novel is indeed transporting. . . . Pick up this book and be spirited away." — Gregory Maguire, The New York Times

From the bestselling, Batchelder Award-winning author and translator of Temple Alley Summer and The House of the Lost on the Cape comes the fantastic adventure that first inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved film, Spirited Away.

Lina’s father had suggested she go "someplace different" for the summer, and she's beginning to wish she hadn’t listened. She could be at her grandma’s house in Nagano now, instead of trudging through a forest in search of a town that might not even exist. But when a gust of wind carries off her umbrella, it leads Lina down a secret path between the trees to a strange and incredible world. In the hidden village of Misty Valley, centaurs roam the cobblestone streets and gnomes visit shops stuffed with spellbooks and enchanted desserts. All magic has a dark side, though, and sometimes even sorcerers need a human’s helping hand.

Now, fifty years after its debut and decades of blockbuster success in Japan, Sachiko Kashiwaba’s acclaimed novel is available in English and certain to delight readers of all ages.

Emilio Renzi, literary alter ego of legendary Argentine author Ricardo Piglia, returns in The Way Out, an academic thriller that relentlessly questions the lengths we go to hide our own truths and to uncover the secrets of others.

In the mid 1990s Emilio Renzi leaves behind his unstable life in Argentina to take a visiting position at a prestigious university in New Jersey. Settling in for a semester of academic quietude and wintry isolation, he is surprised to be swept up in a secret romance with his colleague, the brilliant and enigmatic Ida Brown. But their clandestine relationship comes to an abrupt end when Ida is discovered in her car, killed in what appears to be a tragic accident. Discontented with the police’s lackluster inquiries, and troubled by the inexplicable burn found on her hand, Renzi begins his own investigation.

Renzi's suspicions are piqued as details emerge about a bizarre string of attacks, apparently targeting scientists and researchers. But after a radical manifesto appears in the press threatening continued violence, the killer's identity is suddenly revealed. As he delves deeper into Ida Brown’s past, Renzi discovers a link between her and the terrorist that sets him on a path of no return: he must discover once and for all whether her death was part of a larger pattern and, if so, whether she was a victim or accomplice. Renzi’s quest for truth reveals not only the secrets of his former lover, but also reveals a darker side of humanity that will force him to confront the systems and culture that could produce such a misguided killer.

A bracing critique of American culture and an exploration of privacy and politics in an era of rapid technological advancement, Piglia’s signature blend of autobiography and fiction is in full effect in this intriguing twist on the detective novel.

Emilio Renzi, literary alter ego of legendary Argentine author Ricardo Piglia, returns in The Way Out, an academic thriller that relentlessly questions the lengths we go to hide our own truths and to uncover the secrets of others.

In the mid 1990s Emilio Renzi leaves behind his unstable life in Argentina to take a visiting position at a prestigious university in New Jersey. Settling in for a semester of academic quietude and wintry isolation, he is surprised to be swept up in a secret romance with his colleague, the brilliant and enigmatic Ida Brown. But their clandestine relationship comes to an abrupt end when Ida is discovered in her car, killed in what appears to be a tragic accident. Discontented with the police’s lackluster inquiries, and troubled by the inexplicable burn found on her hand, Renzi begins his own investigation.

Renzi's suspicions are piqued as details emerge about a bizarre string of attacks, apparently targeting scientists and researchers. But after a radical manifesto appears in the press threatening continued violence, the killer's identity is suddenly revealed. As he delves deeper into Ida Brown’s past, Renzi discovers a link between her and the terrorist that sets him on a path of no return: he must discover once and for all whether her death was part of a larger pattern and, if so, whether she was a victim or accomplice. Renzi’s quest for truth reveals not only the secrets of his former lover, but also reveals a darker side of humanity that will force him to confront the systems and culture that could produce such a misguided killer.

A bracing critique of American culture and an exploration of privacy and politics in an era of rapid technological advancement, Piglia’s signature blend of autobiography and fiction is in full effect in this intriguing twist on the detective novel.

From one of Mexico’s foremost authors comes a wondrous adventure story of a boy who goes to live with his kooky, book-obsessed uncle in a library where books have supernatural powers.

“We walked toward the part of the library where the air smelled as if it had been interred for years….. Finally, we got to the hallway where the wooden floor was the creakiest, and we sensed a strange whiff of excitement and fear. It smelled like a creature from a bygone time. It smelled like a dragon.”

Thirteen-year-old Juan’s summer is off to a terrible start. First, his parents separate. Then, almost as bad, Juan is sent away to his strange Uncle Tito’s house for the entire break! Who wants to live with an oddball recluse who has zigzag eyebrows, drinks fifteen cups of smoky tea a day, and lives inside a huge, mysterious library?

As Juan adjusts to his new life among teetering, dusty shelves, he notices something odd: the books move on their own! He rushes to tell Uncle Tito, who lets his nephew in on a secret: Juan is a Princeps Reader, which means books respond magically to him, and he’s the only one who can find the elusive, never-before-read Wild Book. But will Juan and his new friend Catalina get to The Wild Book before the wicked, story-stealing Pirate Book does?

An unforgettable adventure story about books, libraries, and the power of reading, The Wild Book is the young readers’ debut by beloved, prize-winning Mexican author Juan Villoro. It has sold over one million copies in Spanish.

With over one million copies sold in Spanish, Mexican literary legend Juan Villoro’s The Wild Book is a fantastical homage to libraries, in which a boy is sent to live with his kooky, book-obsessed uncle in a library where books have supernatural powers and adventure lies behind every cover.

Thirteen-year-old Juan’s summer is off to a terrible start. First, his parents separate. Then, almost as bad, Juan is sent away to his strange Uncle Tito’s house for the entire break! Who wants to live with an oddball recluse who has zigzag eyebrows, drinks fifteen cups of smoky tea a day, and lives inside a huge, mysterious library?

As Juan adjusts to his new life among teetering, dusty shelves, he notices something odd: the books move on their own! He rushes to tell Uncle Tito, who lets his nephew in on a secret: Juan is a Princeps Reader, which means books respond magically to him, and he’s the only one who can find the elusive, never-before-read Wild Book. But will Juan and his new friend Catalina get to The Wild Book before the wicked, story-stealing Pirate Book does?

An unforgettable adventure story about books, libraries, and the power of reading, The Wild Book is the instant-classic young readers’ debut by beloved, prize-winning Mexican author Juan Villoro.

From one of Mexico’s foremost authors comes a wondrous adventure story of a boy who goes to live with his kooky, book-obsessed uncle in a library where books have supernatural powers.

“We walked toward the part of the library where the air smelled as if it had been interred for years….. Finally, we got to the hallway where the wooden floor was the creakiest, and we sensed a strange whiff of excitement and fear. It smelled like a creature from a bygone time. It smelled like a dragon.”

Thirteen-year-old Juan’s summer is off to a terrible start. First, his parents separate. Then, almost as bad, Juan is sent away to his strange Uncle Tito’s house for the entire break! Who wants to live with an oddball recluse who has zigzag eyebrows, drinks fifteen cups of smoky tea a day, and lives inside a huge, mysterious library?

As Juan adjusts to his new life among teetering, dusty shelves, he notices something odd: the books move on their own! He rushes to tell Uncle Tito, who lets his nephew in on a secret: Juan is a Princeps Reader, which means books respond magically to him, and he’s the only one who can find the elusive, never-before-read Wild Book. But will Juan and his new friend Catalina get to The Wild Book before the wicked, story-stealing Pirate Book does?

An unforgettable adventure story about books, libraries, and the power of reading, The Wild Book is the young readers’ debut by beloved, prize-winning Mexican author Juan Villoro. It has sold over one million copies in Spanish.

A USBBY 2025 Outstanding International Book

Melia is spellbound by the stuffed wildcat in her family’s living room—her cousin swears that it comes to life and roams the streets at night. When she finds a signed note from the animal with secret instructions, a thrilling and dangerous adventure begins.

For Melia and her sister Myrto, summer means a break from Grandfather’s history lessons and weeks of running free at the seaside with their ragtag group of friends. Best of all, cousin Nikos will visit and tell his fabulous stories about the taxidermied wildcat, which opens its blue glass eye when it wants to do good deeds and its black one when it makes trouble. The black eye must be open lately because all the adults have been acting strangely, arguing about politics and fearful of the police. Soon even the children are divided—who can Melia trust? And can the wildcat help keep her family safe?

Set in Greece during the 1930s, when the nation was torn apart by fascism, The Wildcat Behind Glass is an unforgettable tale of family, humanity, and what it means to be free. From its 1963 release to the dozens of international editions and honors that followed including a Mildred L. Batchelder Award, the novel has enchanted generations of young readers. Now, a fresh English translation—the first in over 50 years—breathes new life into the timeless story.

A USBBY 2025 Outstanding International Book

Melia is spellbound by the stuffed wildcat in her family’s living room—her cousin swears that it comes to life and roams the streets at night. When she finds a signed note from the animal with secret instructions, a thrilling and dangerous adventure begins.

For Melia and her sister Myrto, summer means a break from Grandfather’s history lessons and weeks of running free at the seaside with their ragtag group of friends. Best of all, cousin Nikos will visit and tell his fabulous stories about the taxidermied wildcat, which opens its blue glass eye when it wants to do good deeds and its black one when it makes trouble. The black eye must be open lately because all the adults have been acting strangely, arguing about politics and fearful of the police. Soon even the children are divided—who can Melia trust? And can the wildcat help keep her family safe?

Set in Greece during the 1930s, when the nation was torn apart by fascism, The Wildcat Behind Glass is an unforgettable tale of family, humanity, and what it means to be free. From its 1963 release to the dozens of international editions and honors that followed including a Mildred L. Batchelder Award, the novel has enchanted generations of young readers. Now, a fresh English translation—the first in over 50 years—breathes new life into the timeless story.

“Cristina-Sánchez-Andrade is, simply, one of the best writers in Spain. Her language is vastly rich. A memorable narration. A flawless and unusual novel.” —El Correo Gallego

Galicia, Spain’s northwest region, in the 1950s. After a childhood in exile, two sisters return to their grandfather’s cottage for the first time since his shocking murder during the civil war. “The Winterlings” try to keep their dark secrets buried and carve out a peaceful existence in Tierra de Chá, an idyllic village host to a cast of grotesque but charming characters: a powerful psychic, a madman who believes he is a bus, a woman who refuses to die and the obese priest who heaves up a steep hill each day to give her last rites, a cross-dressing dentist who plants the teeth of the deceased in his patients’ mouths.

Tension mounts when the sisters, once united by their passion for Hollywood cinema, compete for the chance to stand in for Ava Gardner in the nearby filming of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Meanwhile, a mutual suspicion develops between the mysterious sisters and the eccentric villagers: Why have the women returned, and what are they hiding? What perverse business arrangement did the townspeople make with their grandfather, and why won’t they speak of his death?

Enchanting as a spell, The Winterlings blends Spanish oral tradition, Latin American magic realism, and the American gothic fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Shirley Jackson into an intoxicating story of romance, violent history, and the mysterious forces that move us.

“Cristina-Sánchez-Andrade is, simply, one of the best writers in Spain. Her language is vastly rich. A memorable narration. A flawless and unusual novel.” —El Correo Gallego

Galicia, Spain’s northwest region, in the 1950s. After a childhood in exile, two sisters return to their grandfather’s cottage for the first time since his shocking murder during the civil war. “The Winterlings” try to keep their dark secrets buried and carve out a peaceful existence in Tierra de Chá, an idyllic village host to a cast of grotesque but charming characters: a powerful psychic, a madman who believes he is a bus, a woman who refuses to die and the obese priest who heaves up a steep hill each day to give her last rites, a cross-dressing dentist who plants the teeth of the deceased in his patients’ mouths.

Tension mounts when the sisters, once united by their passion for Hollywood cinema, compete for the chance to stand in for Ava Gardner in the nearby filming of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Meanwhile, a mutual suspicion develops between the mysterious sisters and the eccentric villagers: Why have the women returned, and what are they hiding? What perverse business arrangement did the townspeople make with their grandfather, and why won’t they speak of his death?

Enchanting as a spell, The Winterlings blends Spanish oral tradition, Latin American magic realism, and the American gothic fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Shirley Jackson into an intoxicating story of romance, violent history, and the mysterious forces that move us.

“There could scarcely be a more opportune moment for the appearance in English of the late Cuban science fiction master Agustín de Rojas’s epic novel The Year 200…. De Rojas’s lucid fictional world intersects with many of our contemporary technological obsessions but charges them with remarkably distinct political valences..... A riveting narrative of espionage and geopolitical turmoil.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as “primitives” or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become “cybos.” When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women.

Drawing as much from the realms of the adventure novel, spy thriller, and political satire as from hard science fiction, horror, and fantasy, The Year 200 has been proven prophetic in its consideration of cryogenic freezing, artificial intelligence, and state surveillance, while its advanced weapons and robot assassins exist in an all-too-imaginable future. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas’s magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, “What does ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ really mean?”

“There could scarcely be a more opportune moment for the appearance in English of the late Cuban science fiction master Agustín de Rojas’s epic novel The Year 200…. De Rojas’s lucid fictional world intersects with many of our contemporary technological obsessions but charges them with remarkably distinct political valences..... A riveting narrative of espionage and geopolitical turmoil.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as “primitives” or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become “cybos.” When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women.

Drawing as much from the realms of the adventure novel, spy thriller, and political satire as from hard science fiction, horror, and fantasy, The Year 200 has been proven prophetic in its consideration of cryogenic freezing, artificial intelligence, and state surveillance, while its advanced weapons and robot assassins exist in an all-too-imaginable future. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas’s magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, “What does ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ really mean?”

Israeli novelist and activist Shulamith Hareven's masterpiece, Thirst: The Desert Trilogy, contains three of her greatest works: The Miracle Hater, Prophet, and After Childhood. In these beautifully written novellas, Hareven recasts the biblical journey from exodus to the Land of Israel in a terrifically imagined contemporary voice. Hareven’s spare and spacious prose howls with the grandeur of the desert wilderness and the mythic beginnings of her nation and her people. Enlarging one of the world’s most dramatic and beloved stories, Hareven shifts our focus from the typical heroes—the great and powerful men of history—to the margins: a disillusioned shepherd who loses faith in his leaders; a would-be prophet from a distant city whose fate becomes entwined with the Israelites; an unhappy couple living at the very edge of civilization.

Hareven, whom the French weekly L'Express listed among the "100 women who move the world,” was the author of nineteen books and was the first (and for twelve years, the only) female member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. As a journalist, she covered two wars and wrote seminal articles on the plight of Palestinians. She became a prominent spokesperson for Israel’s Peace Now movement. Shimon Peres, former president of Israel, called Thirst "both timeless and timely." Now available for the first time as an eBook, Thirst explores with subtlety and depth how individuals learn to relate to nature, to society, and especially to the divine.

Una leyenda del futuro, de Agustín de Rojas, es un admirable estudio sobre la sofocación social que se lleva a cabo en una misión fallida a Titán, una de las lunas de Saturno. El viaje de regreso a tierra fuerza a los tripulantes a confrontar sus miedos más profundos mientras coexisten unos con otros en pleno estado de desesperación. Esta novela extraordinaria, que recuerda 2001: Odisea del espacio de Arthur C. Clarke, es un roman à clef de ciencia ficción sobre las presiones intensas—económicas, ideológicas, psicológicas—de la Cuba comunista.

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Catharina Coenen’s Unexploded Ordnance is a probing and insightful portrait of how trauma takes shape in the body and persists across generations.

Which parts of my nervous system hold the fear of something that my grandmother, mother, aunt lived through? What came to me in my mother’s genes, her mitochondria, or in the way my grandmother’s hand might clutch my wrist? How do I comb these old afflictions from the tangled knot that is my present tense?

In unflinching, inventive, and deeply moving essays, Catharina Coenen interrogates how we are shaped by the stories and histories we inherit. After she had immigrated from Germany to the United States to pursue her career as a doctor of biology, Coenen began to untangle her experience from that of her grandmother and mother, both of whom lived through the second World War in Germany. With the precision and attentiveness of one performing a dissection, Coenen critically peels back generational silences and historical distortions to shed light on the terrors her family members both experienced and were implicated in. Weaving together reflections on language, science, memory, and her own coming to terms with her queerness after two decades of marriage to a man, Coenen moves fluidly between personal and political insights with stunning honesty and elegance.

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Catharina Coenen’s Unexploded Ordnance is a probing and insightful portrait of how trauma takes shape in the body and persists across generations.

Which parts of my nervous system hold the fear of something that my grandmother, mother, aunt lived through? What came to me in my mother’s genes, her mitochondria, or in the way my grandmother’s hand might clutch my wrist? How do I comb these old afflictions from the tangled knot that is my present tense?

In unflinching, inventive, and deeply moving essays, Catharina Coenen interrogates how we are shaped by the stories and histories we inherit. After she had immigrated from Germany to the United States to pursue her career as a doctor of biology, Coenen began to untangle her experience from that of her grandmother and mother, both of whom lived through the second World War in Germany. With the precision and attentiveness of one performing a dissection, Coenen critically peels back generational silences and historical distortions to shed light on the terrors her family members both experienced and were implicated in. Weaving together reflections on language, science, memory, and her own coming to terms with her queerness after two decades of marriage to a man, Coenen moves fluidly between personal and political insights with stunning honesty and elegance.

From the author of The Memory Monster, a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, comes a gripping examination of the complexities of military service as experienced by Abigail, a psychologist who becomes implicated in the dilemmas soldiers encounter both on and off the battlefield.

The tenacious narrator of Yishai Sarid’s Victorious is Abigail, a military psychologist and single mother who has spent her career in the Israeli Army. A leading expert in the psychology of combat, Abigail helps soldiers negotiate the trauma of war while instructing commanders on best practices for killing with resilience and efficacy. 

As her son Shauli approaches the age for military service, Abigail becomes increasingly involved in the lives of the army’s Chief of Staff and those of her patients, and the lines between her personal beliefs and her profession begin to blur. Meanwhile, Abigail’s deeply moral father, a clinical psychologist himself, openly condemns her choice to aid Israel's military machine. Yet for Abigail, it’s a patriotic duty. Only when gentle-hearted Shauli enlists in the elite and dangerous paratroopers unit are Abigail’s own mental defenses finally breached.  

As he did in his acclaimed novel The Memory Monster, Yishai Sarid unmasks the contradictions at the heart of patriotism, national identity, and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Victorious is a riveting, provocative inquiry into modern warfare that forces us to ask: what price are we willing to pay for victory?

From the author of The Memory Monster, a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, comes a gripping examination of the complexities of military service as experienced by Abigail, a psychologist who becomes implicated in the dilemmas soldiers encounter both on and off the battlefield.

The tenacious narrator of Yishai Sarid’s Victorious is Abigail, a military psychologist and single mother who has spent her career in the Israeli Army. A leading expert in the psychology of combat, Abigail helps soldiers negotiate the trauma of war while instructing commanders on best practices for killing with resilience and efficacy. 

As her son Shauli approaches the age for military service, Abigail becomes increasingly involved in the lives of the army’s Chief of Staff and those of her patients, and the lines between her personal beliefs and her profession begin to blur. Meanwhile, Abigail’s deeply moral father, a clinical psychologist himself, openly condemns her choice to aid Israel's military machine. Yet for Abigail, it’s a patriotic duty. Only when gentle-hearted Shauli enlists in the elite and dangerous paratroopers unit are Abigail’s own mental defenses finally breached.  

As he did in his acclaimed novel The Memory Monster, Yishai Sarid unmasks the contradictions at the heart of patriotism, national identity, and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Victorious is a riveting, provocative inquiry into modern warfare that forces us to ask: what price are we willing to pay for victory?

Seven award-winning plays by rising stars of contemporary theater herald a profound shift in what it means to be an American, an immigrant, and an artist on today’s stage.

Shayok Misha Chowdhury | Public Obscenities, shortlisted for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize

Hansol Jung, 2018 Whiting Award–winner | Wolf Play

Martyna Majok, 2018 Pulitzer Prize–winner | Sanctuary City

Mona Mansour, 2020 Kesselring Prize–winner | The Hour of Feeling

Charlie Oh | Coleman ’72, 2021 Paul Stephen Lim Award–winner

Mfoniso Udofia, 2021 Horton Foote Award–winner | Sojourners

Jesús I. Valles, 2023 Yale Drama Series Prize–winner | a river, its mouths

This groundbreaking collection of works by first- and second-generation immigrants unites seven exhilarating new voices of Lebanese, Nigerian, Korean, Bengali, Polish, and Mexican descent. Echoing beyond the stage, their stories draw on common experiences of displacement, alienation, and the sense of living in suspension; sometimes torn between two worlds, sometimes plummeting into the spaces between them. Amid tangled relationships, vengeful landscapes, and buried family mysteries, something universal flickers; the search for safety and the promise of home. Both haunting and galvanizing, What This Place Makes Me will be a vital touchstone for years to come.

Seven award-winning plays by rising stars of contemporary theater herald a profound shift in what it means to be an American, an immigrant, and an artist on today’s stage.

Shayok Misha Chowdhury | Public Obscenities, shortlisted for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize

Hansol Jung, 2018 Whiting Award–winner | Wolf Play

Martyna Majok, 2018 Pulitzer Prize–winner | Sanctuary City

Mona Mansour, 2020 Kesselring Prize–winner | The Hour of Feeling

Charlie Oh | Coleman ’72, 2021 Paul Stephen Lim Award–winner

Mfoniso Udofia, 2021 Horton Foote Award–winner | Sojourners

Jesús I. Valles, 2023 Yale Drama Series Prize–winner | a river, its mouths

This groundbreaking collection of works by first- and second-generation immigrants unites seven exhilarating new voices of Lebanese, Nigerian, Korean, Bengali, Polish, and Mexican descent. Echoing beyond the stage, their stories draw on common experiences of displacement, alienation, and the sense of living in suspension; sometimes torn between two worlds, sometimes plummeting into the spaces between them. Amid tangled relationships, vengeful landscapes, and buried family mysteries, something universal flickers; the search for safety and the promise of home. Both haunting and galvanizing, What This Place Makes Me will be a vital touchstone for years to come.

The magnum opus from Alejandro Jodorowsky—director of The Holy Mountain, star of Jodorowsky’s Dune, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, innovator behind classic comics The Incal and Metabarons, and legend of Latin American literature.

There has never been an artist like the polymathic Chilean director, author, and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. For eight decades, he has blazed new trails across a dazzling variety of creative fields. While his psychedelic, visionary films have been celebrated by the likes of John Lennon, Marina Abramovic, and Kanye West, his novels—praised throughout Latin America in the same breath as those of Gabriel García Márquez—have remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Until now.

Where the Bird Sings Best tells the fantastic story of the Jodorowskys’ emigration from Ukraine to Chile amidst the political and cultural upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jodorowsky’s book transforms family history into heroic legend: incestuous beekeepers hide their crime with a living cloak of bees, a czar fakes his own death to live as a hermit amongst the animals, a devout grandfather confides only in the ghost of a wise rabbi, a transgender ballerina with a voracious sexual appetite holds a would-be saint in thrall. Kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and erotic, Where the Bird Sings Best expands the classic immigration story to mythic proportions.

The magnum opus from Alejandro Jodorowsky—director of The Holy Mountain, star of Jodorowsky’s Dune, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, innovator behind classic comics The Incal and Metabarons, and legend of Latin American literature.

There has never been an artist like the polymathic Chilean director, author, and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. For eight decades, he has blazed new trails across a dazzling variety of creative fields. While his psychedelic, visionary films have been celebrated by the likes of John Lennon, Marina Abramovic, and Kanye West, his novels—praised throughout Latin America in the same breath as those of Gabriel García Márquez—have remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Until now.

Where the Bird Sings Best tells the fantastic story of the Jodorowskys’ emigration from Ukraine to Chile amidst the political and cultural upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jodorowsky’s book transforms family history into heroic legend: incestuous beekeepers hide their crime with a living cloak of bees, a czar fakes his own death to live as a hermit amongst the animals, a devout grandfather confides only in the ghost of a wise rabbi, a transgender ballerina with a voracious sexual appetite holds a would-be saint in thrall. Kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and erotic, Where the Bird Sings Best expands the classic immigration story to mythic proportions.

The magnum opus from Alejandro Jodorowsky—director of The Holy Mountain, star of Jodorowsky’s Dune, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, innovator behind classic comics The Incal and Metabarons, and legend of Latin American literature.

There has never been an artist like the polymathic Chilean director, author, and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. For eight decades, he has blazed new trails across a dazzling variety of creative fields. While his psychedelic, visionary films have been celebrated by the likes of John Lennon, Marina Abramovic, and Kanye West, his novels—praised throughout Latin America in the same breath as those of Gabriel García Márquez—have remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Until now.

Where the Bird Sings Best tells the fantastic story of the Jodorowskys’ emigration from Ukraine to Chile amidst the political and cultural upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jodorowsky’s book transforms family history into heroic legend: incestuous beekeepers hide their crime with a living cloak of bees, a czar fakes his own death to live as a hermit amongst the animals, a devout grandfather confides only in the ghost of a wise rabbi, a transgender ballerina with a voracious sexual appetite holds a would-be saint in thrall. Kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and erotic, Where the Bird Sings Best expands the classic immigration story to mythic proportions.

From French author-illustrator duo Richard Marnier and Aude Maurel comes a captivating picture book about creativity, diversity, and self-expression.

This is my town,
simple and typical.

Each house has a door,
two windows, a red roof
—all so predictable

But then one night… someone leaves on their light!
And in the morning, what a shock!
The shutters are sealed tight!

Who is that who lives next door?
We’ve never seen anything like this before!

In a town where everyone follows the rules, one neighbor’s decision to leave the light on at night completely disrupts the neighborhood, sparking a creative revolution. Vibrant, poetic, and fun, Who Left the Light On? playfully teaches the powerful lesson that diversity, creativity, and individuality should be celebrated.

Exquisitely written and deeply absorbing, this debut from Caine Prize–winning author Olufemi Terry captures the heady abandon of early adulthood in a country still reeling from the lasting effects of racial partition and colonialism.

When his father suggests that he take some time off to visit his cousin, Emil—a young surgeon-in-training—doesn’t ask many questions. For reasons he doesn’t yet understand, he sets aside his studies and moves into his aunt’s house in Stadmutter, a remote multiracial African city. There, he is disquieted by days of unaccustomed aimlessness and by encounters with Bolling, a wealthy foreigner who woos him intellectually and sexually, and Tamsin, a psychology student working to define herself against the fading privilege of her background.

Beneath a veneer of indolence, Stadmutter seethes. Bolling is covertly working with Braeem Shaka, an advocate for reparations, to foment racial tension that imperils the country’s fragile progress. As Shaka becomes a wanted man, Emil and Tamsin grow entangled in his future and that of a country they are both eager to escape.

Exquisitely written and deeply absorbing, this debut from Caine Prize–winning author Olufemi Terry captures the heady abandon of early adulthood in a country still reeling from the lasting effects of racial partition and colonialism.

When his father suggests that he take some time off to visit his cousin, Emil—a young surgeon-in-training—doesn’t ask many questions. For reasons he doesn’t yet understand, he sets aside his studies and moves into his aunt’s house in Stadmutter, a remote multiracial African city. There, he is disquieted by days of unaccustomed aimlessness and by encounters with Bolling, a wealthy foreigner who woos him intellectually and sexually, and Tamsin, a psychology student working to define herself against the fading privilege of her background.

Beneath a veneer of indolence, Stadmutter seethes. Bolling is covertly working with Braeem Shaka, an advocate for reparations, to foment racial tension that imperils the country’s fragile progress. As Shaka becomes a wanted man, Emil and Tamsin grow entangled in his future and that of a country they are both eager to escape.