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Chris Adrian’s magical third novel is a mesmerizing reworking of Shakespeare’s . On Midsummer’s Eve 2008, three brokenhearted people become lost in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park, the secret home of Titania, Oberon, and their court. On this night, something awful is happening in the faerie kingdom: in a fit of sadness over the end of her marriage and the death of her adopted son, Titania has set loose an ancient menace, and the chaos that ensues upends the lives of immortals and mortals alike in a story that is playful, darkly funny, and poignant.<

These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere — and, sometimes, turning back again.

A pharmacist living in New York smuggles drugs to his ailing father in Manila, only to discover alarming truths about his family and his past. In Bahrain, a Filipina teacher drawn to a special pupil finds, to her surprise, that she is questioning her own marriage. A college student leans on her brother, a laborer in Saudi Arabia, to support her writing ambitions, without realizing that his is the life truly made for fiction. And in the title story, a journalist and a nurse face an unspeakable trauma amidst the political turmoil of the Philippines in the 1970s and ’80s.

Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon is considered the towering figure of modern Hebrew literature. With this collection of stories, reissued in paperback and expanded to include additional Agnon classics, the English-speaking audience has, at long last, access to the rich and brilliantly multifaceted fictional world of one of the greatest writers of the last century. This broad selection of Agnon's fiction introduces the full sweep of the writer's panoramic vision as chonicler of the lost world of Eastern European Jewry and the emerging society of modern Israel. New Reader's Preface by Jonathan Rosen.<

Hailed as one of Agnon’s most significant works, depicts Jewish life in Eastern Europe after World War I. A man journeys from Israel to his hometown in Europe, saddened to find so many friends taken by war, pogrom, or disease. In this vanishing world of traditional values, he confronts the loss of faith and trust of a younger generation. This 1939 novel reveals Agnon’s vision of his people’s past, tragic present, and hope for the future.

Cited by National Yiddish Book Center as one of "The Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature".

Shira is Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon’s final, epic novel. Unfinished at the time of his death in 1970, the Hebrew original was published a year later. With this newly revised English translation by Zeva Shapiro, including archival material never before published in English, The Toby Press launches its S.Y. Agnon Library — the fullest collection of Agnon’s works in new and revised translations. “Shira is S. Y. Agnon’s culminating effort to articulate through the comprehensive form of the novel his vision of the role of art in human reality…Enacted against the background of Jerusalem life in the gathering shadows of a historical cataclysm of inconceivable proportions, Shira is so brilliantly rendered that, even without an ending, it deserves a place among the major modern novels."<

A daring novel that explores the taboos surrounding male-female relationships in Saudi Arabia’s deeply conservative society, Where Pigeons Don’t Fly scrutinises the public tyranny of the so-called ‘Committee for Virtue’, which monitors young unmarried couples in Riyadh. Focusing on one young man, the novel follows him from early childhood to the point where he decides to flee from Saudi Arabia to Britain, as a result of the destructive policies that prohibit genuine love in the country. These policies force male-female love underground, often leading to jail or banishment from Saudi Arabia. The author, through the lens of this one character, reveals truths about his country’s male-dominated and divided society.<

S.Y. Agnon was the greatest Hebrew writer of the twentieth century, and the only Hebrew writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He devoted the last years of his life to writing a massive cycle of stories about Buczacz, the Galician town (now in Ukraine) in which he grew up. Yet when these stories were collected and published three years after Agnon's death, few took notice. Years passed before the brilliance and audacity of Agnon's late project could be appreciated.

James S. Diamond has provided an extensive set of notes to make it possible for today's reader to grasp the rich cultural world of the text. The introduction and interpretive essay by Alan Mintz illuminate Agnon's grand project for recreating the life of Polish Jewry, and steer the reader through the knots and twists of the plot.

The volume’s title story, published here in English for the first time, tells of the epic and tragic clash between two Torah scholars in a lost world “three or four generations ago.” Agnon at his best — distilling the classical texts of Jewish study into a modern midrashic matrix. Includes revised translations of: “Tehilla,” “In the Heart of the Seas,” and “In the Prime of her Life,” all with new introductions and annotations.<

Two newly revised translations from the Hebrew, with new and illustrated annotations, of two novellas by Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon. Two stories clearly in dialogue with one another, sharing elements of moonstruck sleepwalkers, disengaged academics, and the typically Agnonian unfulfilled love.

In Betrothed, Jacob Rechnitz, a marine biologist arrives in pre-World War I Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast of the Land of Israel. His scholarly pursuits and gentle dalliance with six girls is interrupted by the arrival of his benefactor Ehrlich and his daughter Shoshanah, who is destined to rouse Jacob from his waking slumber through the power of their childhood betrothal oath.

The idyllic peace of Betrothed is counterpointed in Edo and Enam by restlessness leading to tragedy. The scholars Ginat and Gamzu are wanderers; men like the narrator himself, gambling on travel for some magical answer to their problems. Ironically, Gamzu’s wife Gemulah, a sleepwalker, puts an end to their quest in a manner as tragic as it is unexpected.

In de tuin van De Love, een gerestaureerde boerderijk in de omgeving van de stad Brugge, wordt een lijk ontdekt. Met de hulp van substituut Hannelore Martens en brigadier Guido Versavel probeert commissaris Pieter van In het lichaam te identificeren. Hij komt erachter dat De Love destijds als lustoord fungeerde voor tal van prominente figuren, waaronder de machtsgeile Lodewij Vandaele. Pas wanneer William Aerts, een medewerker van Vandaele, spoorloos verdwijnt, en Yves Provoost, een alom gerespecteerd advocaat en vaste klant van De Love, vermoord wordt, komt de zaak in een stroomversnelling terecht. Van In komt banden met een malafide uiterst-rechtse groepering op het spoor, die de bescherming geniet van Johan Brys, minister van Buitenlandse Zaken.<

Durch Zufall erhält die Moskauer Kriminalmiliz die Information, daß vor wenigen Tagen ein Mann ermordet wurde. Bekannt ist sogar einer der Täter, der jedoch entkommen kann. Als nach mühevoller Suche der Tote in einem Schuppen gefunden wird, stellt sich heraus, daß im Haus nebenan etwa zur gleichen Zeit ein schwerer Einbruchsdiebstahl begangen wurde. Hängen die beiden Verbrechen zusammen?

Wer ist der Tote? Weshalb wurde er umgebracht? Je tiefer die Kriminalmiliz in den Fall eindringt, desto mehr Rätsel gibt er ihnen auf. Die Verbindungen der Verbrecher reichen bis in eine Stadt am Schwarzen Meer, und allmählich zeichnen sich die Konturen eines riesigen und perfekt organisierten Wirtschaftsverbrechens ab.

Arkadi Adamow (Jahrgang 1920), der Begründer des sowjetischen Kriminalromans, wird seit vielen Jahren auch in der DDR gern gelesen. Unter anderem erschienen von ihm bei Volk und Welt „Gift aus dem Kischlak", „Der verschwundene Hotelgast", „Die Tote in der Baugrube" und „Ein Uhr nachts".

Foto: © M. N. Pasi

Arkadi Adamow

Titel der Originalausgabe:

На свободное место

© Издательство „Советский писатель", Москва 1981

When Christopher Thomas, a curator at San Francisco's Museum of Fine Arts, is murdered and his decaying body is found in an iron maiden in Berlin, his wife Rosemary Thomas is the prime suspect.

Long suffering under Christopher's unfaithful ways, Rosemary is tried, convicted and executed. Ten years later, Jon Nunn, the detective who cracked the case, becomes convinced that the wrong person was put to death. Along with financier Tony Olsen, he plans to gather everyone who was there the night Christopher died and finally uncover the truth about what happened that fateful evening. Could it have been the ne'er do well brother Peter Hausen, interested in his sister's trust fund having got through his own; the curatorial assistant Justine Olengard, used and betrayed by Christopher; the artist Belle who turned down his advances only to see her career suffer a setback; or someone else all together?

No Rest for the Dead is a thrilling, page-turning accomplishment that only the very best thriller writers could achieve.

When looking for a job, it’s a good idea to stay open to out-of-the-ordinary possibilities…<

Any

The scope of life may be far wider than most humans think—but there’s at least one human trait that’s likely to persist through even the most extreme changes…<

Bigot Hall is the nightmare home of a family most people would rather forget. Uncle Burst's belief that his face is made of pasta is one of the milder notions with which he regales the family. Uncle Snapper is confined to a treehouse because of the uncontrollable urges he feels once is gun is loaded. Uncle Blute drowned in the lake at the wheel of his Morris Traveller, where he remains perfectly preserved. And Nanny Jack refuses all efforts to bury her and strikes terror into her relatives' hearts as she abandons yet another final resting place. Throughout this happy breed strolls a nameless anti-hero, who, when not kidnapped by clowns or puzzling out the fossilised family tree, is passionately in love with his spaced-out sister, Adrienne…<

Saleem, fed up with all the violence, religiosity, and strict family hierarchies of his Iraqi village, flees to Spain to establish a new life for himself. But his lonely exile is turned upside down when he encounters his father, Noah, in a Madrid nightclub after not seeing him in more than a decade. Noah looks and acts like a new man, and Saleem sets out to discover the mystery of his father’s presence in Spain and his altered life. In doing so, he recalls formative moments in Iraq of familial love, war, and the haunting accidental death of his cousin Aliya, Saleem’s partner in the hesitant, tender exploration of sexuality. When the renewed relationship with his father erupts in a violent conflict, Saleem is forced to rediscover his sense of self and the hard-won stability of his life. Through Saleem’s experiences and reflections, the fast-paced narrative carries the reader between Spain and Iraq to a surprising resolution.<