Five short stories by the distinguished Austrian author explore the emotions of women in love

Five Women

Literature & Fiction

Robert Musil

Literary

Verba Mundi

"One of the great novels of the century. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the late 20th century has produced a novel on the level of Joyce, Proust, Mann, Kafka, and Nabokov."―Boston Globe From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, Life is stories connected by a single moment in time (8:00 p.m. on June 23, 1975) in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris. Chapter by chapter, room by room, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. The apartment block’s one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book, too, contains a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formula. All for the reader to solve.

Life A User's Manual

GEORGES PEREC

Contemporary

Relates the horrific twin tales of a fragile boyhood in occupied France and of the mysterious island of W, a remote place near Chile where athletes undergo horrible competitions.

W, or the Memory of Childhood

PEREC, GEORGES

The secure world of a well-established and apparently perfectly assimilated Jewish writer living in an Austrian town before World War II, disintegrates under the force of political and social realities that daily sanctify the old and endemic Austrian anti-Semitism. We learn what we learn through Bruno, the thirteen-year-old son of the family, whose spare and uninflected account discloses the slow onset of disaster. His father, a successful Austrian intellectual, refuses the implications of what s happening and embraces the humiliating routines of Jewish self-hatred. To the vicious attacks on his writing and character, he adds his own voice until, with nothing left not faith, not family, not dignity he disappears. Thirty years later, the war long over, Bruno, at a low point in a childless marriage, responds to ambiguously positive inquiries about his father s work, and travels from his home in Jerusalem to the Austrian town of his childhood. What he encounters in that town, now clean of Jews, enables him to face his own profound losses, and, in some measure, redeem the sins of his father.

Age of Wonders

Aron Appelfeld

"Things: A Story of the Sixties" is the story of a young couple who want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is through ownership of 'things'. Perec's first novel won the Prix Renaudot and became the cult book for a generation. In "A Man Asleep", a young student embarks upon a disturbing and exhaustive pursuit of indifference, following his experience in non-existence with relentless logic.

Things: A Story of the Sixties/A Man Asleep

The Book of Nights marks the American debut of one of Europe's most powerful and celebrated young writers. Winner of six literary prizes, The Book of Nights combines the timeless power of medieval legend, the resonance of Greek tragedy, and the harsh immediacy of a newsreel. Sylvie Germain traces a century in the life of the Peniel family, and especially of the Victor-Flandrin Peniel (nicknamed Night-of-gold-Wolf-face because of the hereditary gold fleck in the eye). It is Victor-Flandrin-larger than life yet fully human-who acts as focal point for the intertwined stories of the Peniels (including Victor's four wives and fifteen children); of their lovers and enemies; and of the endless cycle of birth and death, triumph and loss, madness and passion, eroticism and holocaust-from the Franco-Prussian War to World War II-that envelops and buffets their lives. Blending the historical with the supernatural, the comic with the grotesque, the lyrical and the brutal, Sylvie Germain tells the story of humanity's strivings and vanity, of the profound injustices that govern our relations, and of the fundamental strength that allows us ultimately to triumph over carnage and degradation. The Book of Nights is a "powerfully, deeply felt, imaginative" book (The Times Literary Supplement) by a fresh and compelling new voice.

Book of Nights (Verba Mundi Series)

Germain, Sylvie

The Prospector is the crowning achievement from one of France's preeminent contemporary novelists and a work rich with sensuality and haunting resonance. It is the turn of the century on the island of Mauritius, and young Alexis L'Etang enjoys an idyllic existence with his parents and beloved sister: sampling the pleasures of privilege, exploring the constellations and tropical flora, and dreaming of treasure buried long ago by the legendary Unknown Corsair. But with his father's death, Alexis must leave his childhood paradise and enter the harsh world of privation and shame. Years later, Alexis has become obsessed with the idea of finding the Corsair's treasure and, through it, the lost magic and opulence of his youth. He abandons job and family, setting off on a quest that will take him from remote tropical islands to the hell of World War I, and from a love affair with the elusive Ouma to a momentous confrontation with the search that has consumed his life. By turns harsh and lyrical, pointed and nostalgic, The Prospector is 'a parable of the human condition;' (Le Mond) by one of the most significant literary figures in Europe today. (Verba Mundi)

The Prospector (Verba Mundi (Hardcover))

Le Clézio, J.M.G.

The Lonely Years, a collection of private correspondence, is essential to an understanding of Isaac Babel's life and works. Babel rose to fame in 1920s Russia for such books as Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories. But as Stalin's regime grew repressive, he found it increasingly difficult to write or publish. He was finally arrested in 1939, never to be heard from again. Alternately tender and biting, and accompanied by nine stories from the lonely years, these letters show an individual laboring against all odds to remain true to his craft and ideals. This edition contains a new introduction, based on previously unreleased information from the KGB files.

The Lonely Years: 1925–1939: Unpublished Stories and Correspondence (Verba Mundi (Paperback))

Babel, Isaac

Genre Fiction

The Christmas Oratio is a grand fresco of human strife, ambition, and desire by Sweden's foremost contemporary novelist. Centering on three generations of Nordensson men, it unravels a saga as elaborately structured as a Bach cantata and as emotionally complex as a Bergman film. The Christmas Oratio begins in the 1930s, when Solveig Nordensson (wife of Aron and mother of Sidner) is accidentally killed. The grieving family abandons its home and moves to another town, hoping to start afresh, but finds that its emotional burdens have emigrated with it. Aron, bereft by the loss of his wife, starts "seeing" her in capricious hallucinations, and tragically seeks her reincarnation in a love-starved woman half a world away. The introverted Sidner begins a quest for emotional maturity that leads him into odd friendships with a remarkably self-reliant street boy and a free-spirited older woman. And Grandson Victor, heir to the tortured legacy left by Solveig's death, finds redemption for himself in a staging of Bach's Christmas Oratio - a performance begun by Solveig half a century earlier and interrupted by her tragic death. More than a generational saga, The Christmas Oratio is one of those rare works that encompasses the entirety of the human drama in terms at once touching, comic, erotic, and surreal. This is a novel of phenomenal breadth and insight, and a stunning debut in English by one of the most celebrated authors in Scandinavia today. "A wonderful novel, crammed with vivid and surprising incidents . . . Like Bach's great musical work, Tunström's 'Oratorio' offers a celebration of things that endure." Washington Times

Christmas Oratorio (Verba Mundi)

Tunstrom, Goran

From the author of The Bride Price (a New York Times Notable Book of 1992) comes a dark and haunting story of memory, guilt, and the meaning of responsibility. Andreas, a once-promising poet, lives with his bride, Susanne, in postwar Germany. Aalthough surrounded by the trappings of comfort and success, Andreas is obsessed by the memory of Susanne's younger brother, Daniel, whom he had sheltered in Amsterdam, but who was eventually deported by the Gestapo. The war over, Andreas rebuilds his life in the "new" Germany, trying to recapture Daniel through marriage to his sister. But he is unable to write or to find peace, unable to forget his torture over Daniel or the harrowing days and nights of the Occupation. Finally, he returns to Amsterdam to confront his memories of the war it was there that Andreas first recognized the horror inflicted by his own people, as every night he witnessed the round-up of the city's Jews beneath his window. And it was there that he came to the realizations about himself, his past, and his heritage that give this story its profound resonance. Told in a distinctly urgent voice and with a gaze at once acerbic and compassionate, Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat, like The Bride Price, is a "thoughtful, beautifully written exposition on love and fear" (ALA Booklist) by one of Germany's most respected contemporary novelists.

Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat (Verba Mundi (Hardcover))

Grete Weil

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Books by Verba Mundi