Vladimir Lorchenkov tells the story of a group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts, against all odds and at any cost, to emigrate from Moldova, Europe's most impoverished nation, to Italy for work. In this uproarious tale, an Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the promised land of Italy; meanwhile, politicians remain politicians. Outstanding ... darkly hilarious." The Wall Street Journal "A simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking tale.” Publishers Weekly A touching and hilarious chronicle about the age-old European yearning for one more chance. A chance that may never come ” Gary Shteyngart Firmly in the great tradition of East European black humour and stands comparison with Hasek, Hrabal and Voinovich and will have you laughing unless, of course, you are a sensitive soul.” The Modern Novel The Good Life Elsewhere revels in absurdity, right down to the over-the-top satisfying end Good though occasionally also very dark absurdist fun, by a talented writer.” The Complete Review Original, both serious and comic, and, at times, tragic.” Profile Magazine Vladimir Lorchenkov is a highly talented imposter painting a colorful, bright, and crazy life in a benighted post-Soviet corner of the world.” Vedomosti This is a bleeding, wild work, grotesque in every twist of its plot and in every character, written brightly, bitterly, humorously, and paradoxically, as we’re dealing with the grotesque honestly.” Krupa.ru Is it possible for lovely Italy to take the place of both hell and paradise, as well as one’s most cherished dream? Vladimir Lorchenkov explores this possibility in vivid colors, with a pamphleteer’s spite, and a good-humored smile.” Literaturnaya Gazeta

The Good Life Elsewhere

Literature & Fiction

Lorchenkov, Vladimir

Humor & Satire

New Vessel Press

Berlin-born Fanny von Arnstein married a financier to the Austro-Hungarian imperial court, and in 1798 her husband became the first unconverted Jew in Austria to be granted the title of baron. Soon Fanny hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted the leading figures of her day, including Madame de Staël and Arthur Schopenhauer. Hilde Spiel's carefully researched biography provides a vivid portrait of a brave and passionate woman, illuminating a central era in European cultural and social history.

Fanny von Arnstein: Daughter of the Enlightenment

Biographies & Memoirs

Spiel, Hilde

Arts & Literature

On the shores of Israel's Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Young Shlomi, who develops a remarkable culinary talent, has fallen for Ella, the strange neighbor with suicidal tendencies; his little brother Hilik obsessively collects words in a notebook. In the wild, selfish but magical grown-up world that swirls around them, a mother with a poet's soul mourns the deaths of literary giants while her handsome husband cheats on her both at home and abroad. Some Day is a gripping family saga. Shemi Zarhin's hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel's larger national story.
Shemi Zarhin, born in Tiberias in 1961, is a novelist, film director, and screenwriter who has created some of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning films in the history of Israeli cinema.

Some Day

Zarhin, Shemi

Literary

The New Republic Best Books of 2013 and World Literature Today Best Books of 2013. "A simple mystery constructed very cleverly ... an atmospheric and understated book with vivid settings and characters, a true delight to read."–10 Best Books Shorter than 150 Pages, Publishers Weekly "Mairal's quickening prose moves from the ordinary to the opulent . . . without skipping a beat."—Jed Perl, The New Republic "Mairal isn't your old college literature professor's idea of an Argentine novelist."—Los Angeles Times "Affirms Pedro Mairal's stature as one of the most significant Argentine writers working today."—David Leavitt, author of The Two Hotel Francforts At age nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of long rolls of canvas, minutely detailing six decades of life in his village on Argentina's river frontier with Uruguay. After the death of Salvatierra, his sons return to the village from Buenos Aires to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with canvases stretching over two miles in length, depicting personal and communal history. Museum curators come calling to acquire this strange, gargantuan artwork but an essential one of its rolls is missing. A search that illuminates the links between art and life ensues, as an intrigue of family secrets buried in the past cast their shadows on the present. Pedro Mairal, born in Buenos Aires in 1970, is one of the most exciting Argentine novelists of his generation. In 2007 he was included in the Bogotá 39, which named the best Latin American authors.

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra

MAIRAL, PEDRO

Paris in the 1920s - dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits ... unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine's dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous than his press reports when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty and wicked, Pitigrilli's classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and charts the comedy and tragedy of a young man's downfall and the lure of a bygone era. The novel's descriptions of sex and drug use prompted church authorities to place it on a list of forbidden books, while appealing to filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder who wrote a script based on the tale. Cocaine retains its venom even today.

Cocaine

Pitigrilli

Killing the Second Dog

"Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull."The Washington Post
His writing is taut and psychologically nuanced like that of the great dime-store novelist Georges Simenon, his novelistic world as profane as Isaac Babel's.”Wall Street Journal
"Spokesman for those who were angry and beat . . . turbulent, temperamental, and tortured."The New York Times
"A must-read . . . piercing and compelling."Kirkus Reviews
"A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue."Roman Polanski
 Marek Hlasko lived through what he wrote and died of an overdose of solitude and not enough love.” Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There
"A glittering black comedy ... that is equally entertaining and wrenching." Publishers Weekly
"The idol of Poland's young generation in 1956." Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
 Robert and Jacob are down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1960s. They're planning to run a scam on an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, adrift in the nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the woman, whose heart is open; the men are hoping her wallet is too. What follows is a story of love, deception, cruelty, and shame, as Jacob pretends to fall in love with her. It's not just Jacob who's performing a role; nearly all the characters are actors in an ugly story, complete with parts for murder and suicide. Marek Hlasko's writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
Marek Hlasko, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe, was exiled from Communist Poland and spent his life wandering the globe. He died in 1969 of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Humor & Entertainment

Hłasko, Marek

Humor

"Hlasko was an original. His novels were fearless, his vision unsparing, and decades later, his darkly brilliant work has lost none of its power to unsettle. He achieved what few other writers ever have: he turned the literary landscape into a much more interesting place than it was when he found it." ––Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven, Last Night in Montreal and The Singer's Gun
"Blowtorch of a novel . . . matchless and prescient."—Publishers Weekly
"Spokesman for those who were angry and beat . . . turbulent, temperamental, and tortured."—The New York Times
"A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue . . . a born rebel and troublemaker of immense charm."—Roman Polanski
In this novel of breathtaking tension and sweltering love, two desperate friends on the edge of the law—one of them tough and gutsy, the other small and scared—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov's recently married younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov's business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn't help that a beautiful German widow named Ursula is rooming next door. What follows is a story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, all conveyed in hardboiled prose reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with a cinematic style that would make Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando green with envy.
Marek Hlasko, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe, was exiled from Communist Poland and spent his life wandering the globe. He died in 1969 of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills in Wiesbaden, Germany.

All Backs Were Turned (Rebel Lit)

Travel

"Hilarious, beautiful and compassionate ... exquisitely rendered."World Literature Today
A sweet, sad, sunny meditation on birds and music and the gentle approach of death.” John Rockwell, former New York Times arts critic and editor and founding director of Lincoln Center Festival
"A deeply compassionate meditation on one man’s life and its impending finality. Amusingly digressive and philosophically rich ... Gaponenko, at just thirty-four, remains a serious young talent and someone to keep an eye out for in the coming years."Rain Taxi
"A book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a child's faith. . . . Astonishes to the very end."Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"With layers of inventive language, vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom, this is a brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte."Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology
"A celebration of creation and all its wonders, full of the joy of life."Der Spiegel
"A work of unbridled imagination. Marjana Gaponenko is exuberantly talented, and here she pulls out all the stops."Die Welt
"A panorama of twentieth century Central European history."Citation for the 2013 Adelbert von Chamisso Prize
In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale, in which Levadski feels his heart pounding at the portals of his brain,” mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.
Marjana Gaponenko was born in 1981 in Odessa, Ukraine. She fell in love with the German language as a young girl, and began writing in German when she was sixteen. She now lives in Vienna and Mainz.

Who Is Martha?

Gaponenko, Marjana

"The best of the best from this year's bountiful harvest of uncommonly strong offerings ... Deeply original." O, The Oprah Magazine 
"Milena Michiko Flašar’s beautiful novel ... is a story about freedom and responsibility, and it results in an almost Sartrean meditation."Times Literary Supplement 
"Exceptional ... In today’s less-than-brave new world in which sincere human interaction is disappearing even as the numbers of so-called friends’ are multiplying, Necktie is a piercing reminder to acknowledge, nurture, and share our humanity."Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center blog BookDragon 
The quiet reflection of this jewel of a novel is revelatory, redemptive and hypnotic until the last word.”Kirkus Reviews
A spare, stunning, elegiac gem of a book. Milena Michiko Flašar writes with a poet’s clarity of language and vision, probing deeply below the surfaces of familiar Japanese stereotypes to tell a compassionate and insightful story of dysfunction, despair and friendship.”Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
Flašar’s exquisite, finely wrought novel is both a prose poem and a parable about how we deflect, defer and disconnect from life, and what is needed before we can bravely embrace it again.” Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth
"A tender, melancholy book of great linguistic beauty and clarity. A flawless novel."Süddeutsche Zeitung
"With high artistry . . . this seductive beauty is also strangely religious: the book treats life with an almost Buddhist serenity."Der Spiegel
Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomoria shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interactionin his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can't bring himself to tell his wife, and shows up every day in a suit and tie to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises. The reader turns the last page feeling that a small triumph has occurred.
Milena Michiko Flašar was born in 1980, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Austrian father. She lives in Vienna. I Called Him Necktie won the 2012 Austrian Alpha Literature Prize.

I Called Him Necktie

Flašar, Milena Michiko

Parenting & Relationships

"Fabre’s unexpectedly touching novel has a laugh of its own behind its low-key, smoothly translated narrative voice ... The city it evokes isn’t the Paris of tourists but of local people."The New York Times
"Fabre is a genius of these nuanced, interior moments ... The story Fabre tells is that of every one of us: looking for meaning in the mundane, moving through our lives, our interactions, as if through the fabric of a dream ... How do we live? it asks to consider. And: What does our existence mean?"Los Angeles Times
"Guys Like Me is a short, arresting tale that ...not only offers keen insights into the mind of its middle-aged protagonist, but also provides the reader with a unique tour of what everyday life in the low-key suburbs of Paris must truly be like."Typographical Era
"Readers will take pleasure in this well-told tale with a satisfying ending."Publishers Weekly
"The setting may be Paris, but it’s not the Paris of grand avenues and pricey cafés. In fact, Fabre’s hero is a recognizable everyman, from any country."Library Journal
A smile like a soft flash of light . . . travels through this moving novel and tells, in words that are muted and profoundly humane, of life as it is."Le Monde
"Fabre speaks to us of luck and misfortune, of the accidents that make a man or defeat him. He talks about our ordinary disappointments and our small moments of calm. Fabre is the discreet megaphone of the man in the crowd."Elle
"In this novel one finds the intimate geography of an author who lays bare the essence of Paris and its outskirts."La Quinzaine littéraire
Dominique Fabre, born in Paris and a lifelong resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift, without passions or prospects. He's looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, Guys Like Me is a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.
Dominique Fabre, born in 1960, writes about people living on society's margins. He is a lifelong resident of Paris, France. His previous novel, The Waitress Was New, was also translated into English.

Guys Like Me

Fabre, Dominique

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