Alternating between Renaissance Italy and Yugoslavia during the time of Tito, this novel tells two tales of love, intrigue, and betrayal. It is the summer of 1995, the war in Bosnia is raging, and the young Bosnian narrator is taking a tour of an Italian Renaissance castle. He soon finds himself caught up in the two tales of passion and intrigue that his Franciscan guide, a refugee like himself, relates. One is the story of Enzo Strecci, a Renaissance poet from Lombardy who has the ill fortune of falling in love with the wife of Francesco Mardi, his host and protector during a time of Hapsburg incursions and espionage. The other is the story of the Franciscan's own ill-fated passion for the local Communist police commander's daughter during Tito's rupture with Stalinism. Between Rimini, Italy, in 1535 and the Croatian island of Rab in 1948, lives and fates become intertwined, history repeats itself, and nostalgia for home proves itself to be bittersweet.

A Castle in Romagna

Literature & Fiction

Štiks, Igor

Contemporary

Autumn Hill Books

Crossing countries and continents, this narrative follows a son lost for words over the death of his father. Unable to write the phrase "My father is dead" in either his native Greek or his adopted French, he heads for Africa to undertake the learning of Sango. Traveling across both borders and time, he examines his past, his family history, and the colonial and political ties of his homelands. While at first he does not know why learning a new and uncommon language has become vital to him, he comes to discover that the new language enables him to easily write of his father's passing. But as he truly experiences Sango—meets its speakers, travels where it emerged and has struggled to survive—his intimacy with it grows, and he is once again unable to utter the telling phrase. Meditating on language, loss, and the power of words to express or constrain human emotion, this tale of speaking, living, and letting go is filled with delicate suspense, humor, and honesty.

Foreign Words

Alexakis, Vassilis

Through short, historical vignettes on spiritual teachers and brief stories, this narrative examines the Zen-like spiritual practices of Central Asian Sufism and provides a personal account of the seeker’s own entry into the traditions of the Naqshbandiya of Uzbekistan. Part history, part devotional work or stranstvie (a literary, religious, and historical wandering), this book seeks to explore, preserve, validate, and through discreet segments"On Listening Attentively", "On Gentle Words", "On Proper Posture"record and ruminate on Sufi Islam as practiced in Central Asia across the centuries. The book’s historical and devotional aspects are made beautiful and compelling through the seeker’s poetic idiom, his own uncertainty, and his sense of unworthiness in the search for God. Core ideas of love, sacrifice, absence of self, and divine and human purpose find expression in every part of this account, attempting to strike a chord in modern or postmodern lives.

Silence of the Sufi: And I Do Call to Witness the Self-Reproaching Spirit

Religion & Spirituality

Madaliev, Sabit

Islam

Divided into three parts—fire, earth, and wind—this novel follows Walter from his rural adolescence through his adult years as he leaves his known world for the chaos and complexity of Rome. Wrestling with difficult family relationships and outgrowing childhood friendships, Walter finds himself in the end searching for a long-lost friend and the certainty he once knew.

Anima Mundi

Tamaro, Susanna

Set against the omnipresent pounding of artillery on the enchanting island of Rab, this gripping tale of politics and psychosis juxtaposes one instance of crime against acts of mass murder occurring elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. When a transvestite prostitute nicknamed the “Match Girl” is cruelly murdered on the Croatian island, investigators are forced to delve deep into Rab's underbelly to find her murderer. From corpse chaperones, pedophilia, and xenophobia to Romanian secret police, exorcisms, and radioactive watches, the detectives are brought face to face with the secrets, illnesses, and deviant behavior of the island’s inhabitants.

The Death of the Little Match Girl

Feric, Zoran

Dispossessed of her vast property on the island of Rab by the Communist authorities of Yugoslavia, 100-year-old Madonna lies on her death bed—finicky, frail, and foul-smelling. Her nurse, Mali, thinks it a miracle that she lives at all. Although their relationship is never made exactly clear, Mali performs his duties with patience and care, as he reflects on their lives, the island, and the country. Set in the borderland between Italy and Croatia, this lyrical novel explores themes of the individual, family, duty, love, memory, religion, and state and conveys emotionally vivid portraits about the passing of a generation and a way of life. This new translation incorporates the author's significant revisions to the text since its original publication.

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

Novak, Slobodan

In 1960s Transylvania where the novel begins, five-year-old Ildiko becomes victim to psychological abuse at the hands of her babysitter, Yutzi, whom she worships and follows everywhere. Though Ildiko’s family immigrates to Israel soon after, Ildiko’s life continues to be shaped by the secret deep within her; not until many years later is Ildiko able to reveal her story. In flashback fashion, she recounts her horror to her worried husband, who at the novel’s start is nearly hysterical with worry about a recent mysterious and possibly violent incident. Only as Ildiko’s story unfolds—and with it the parallel stories of her family and her husband—do readers come to understand what has taken place and how Ildiko’s story has come full circle. This psychological thriller focuses on family relationships and the aftermath of childhood trauma, and although not a novel specifically of the Holocaust, the narrative is driven by characters whose lives were shaped by it, so much so that those events become a silent character in the book.

Laundry

Adam, Suzane

Childhood, the pleasures of reading, loss, and joy are among the subjects featured in this collection of nine essays. In the fusing of memoir, short story, and reflective essay genres along with the spiritual exposé of modern life, this meditative prose examines spirituality and living mindfully.

A Little Party Dress: Lyric Essays

BOBIN, Christian

New Age & Spirituality

Containing 11 short, contemplative sketches—rarely more than 10 pages long—this collection reflects upon time, paying attention, solitude, companionship, and grace. In an era of increasingly cynical, mediatized or sensationalistic literature, the voice is a quiet plea for sanity, simplicity, and a return to the source.

I Never Dared Hope for You: Lyric Essays

Ancient China is illustriously brought to life in these folk tales, legends, and stories of historical figures that routinely rank alongside such Japanese literary classics as Rashomon” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Kokoro by Natsume Soseki. When they first appeared in Japanese periodicals in 1942 and 1943, they sparked a potentially rich and long career for author Atsushi Nakajima, who tragically died of asthma complicated by severe pneumonia shortly thereafter, but whose work has continued to grow in Japanese regard ever since. This collection marks the first time these works have been translated into English.

The Moon Over the Mountain: Stories

Nakajima, Atsushi

Short Stories & Anthologies

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