Simon, a middle-aged architect separated from his wife, is given the chance to live out a stereotypical male fantasy: freed from the travails of married life, he ends up living with three nubile lingerie models who use him as a sexual object.Set in the 1980s, there's a further tension between Simon's desire to exploit this stereotypical fantasy and his (as well as the author's) desire to treat the women as human beings, despite the women's claims that Simon can't distinguish between their personalities.Employing a variety of forms, Barthelme gracefully plays with this setup, creating a story that's not just funny — although it's definitely that — but actually quite melancholy, as Simon knows that the women's departure is inevitable, that this "paradise" will come to an end, and that he'll be left with only an empty house, booze, and regrets about chances not taken.

"They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time." So begins this visionary work from a storyteller. Toni Morrison's first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Paradise opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage.In prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem, Toni Morrison challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation of race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present.

"In contemporary Argentine literature, Paradises is an almost perfect novel." — TonicaAlbert Camus's The Outsider reimagined with a female lead in in twenty-first-century Buenos Aires.Recently widowed, a young woman leaves the countryside for Buenos Aires with her four-year-old son where she seeks to build a new life for herself. She finds work in the zoo and moves into the human zoo of a squatted tower block at the invitation of one of its residents, to whom she acts as nurse, giving morphine injections.

Powieść Hellera to utrzymana w konwencji czarnej groteski historia grupy amerykańskich lotników odbywających w czasie ostatniej wojny loty bojowe nad zajętymi przez Niemców obszarami Włoch. Walcząc z absurdem wojskowej biurokracji i kazuistyki, symbolizowanej przez tytułowy "paragraf 22", bohaterowie najzwyczajniej w świecie usiłują ocalić swoje życie. Dziwactwa, a nawet szaleństwo ludzi nieustannie zagrożonych śmiercią okazują się działaniami całkowicie racjonalnymi w zetknięciu z szaleństwem wojskowej machiny."Paragraf 22" to jedna z najbardziej radykalnie antymilitarystycznych i antywojennych książek w literaturze światowej.Joseph Heller (ur. 1923) podczas II wojny światowej służył w amerykańskim lotnictwie bombowym stacjonującym we Włoszech. Po zwolnieniu z wojska i powrocie do Nowego Jorku pracował w wielu różnych zawodach, nosząc się przez cały czas z zamiarem napisania książki o swoich wojennych doświadczeniach.Wydany w 1961 r. "Paragraf 22" zyskał ogromy rozgłos, stając się tzw. "powieścią kultową" środowisk młodzieżowych – początkowo w USA, a później także w wielu innych krajach świata. Świadomość, że każda następna książka będzie porównywana z "Paragrafem 22", paraliżowała inwencję autora, toteż dopiero po dłuższej przerwie Heller wydał powieść "Coś sie stało" (1974), następnie m.in. "Good as Gold" (1979), "Bóg wie" (1984), "Namaluj to" (1998) – jednakże żadna z nich nie dorównała sławą jego debiutanckiemu utworowi.

In 1989, the year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse on a park bench and alerts the authorities. This scene opens a novel of extraordinary scope and depth, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans — Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Gypsies — across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century.Three unusual men are at the heart of Parallel Stories: Hans von Wolkenstein, whose German mother is linked to secrets of fascist-Nazi collaboration during the 1940s; Ágost Lippay Lehr, whose influential father has served Hungary’s different political regimes for decades; and András Rott, who has his own dark record of mysterious activities abroad. The web of extended and interconnected dramas reaches from 1989 back to the spring of 1939, when Europe trembled on the edge of war, and extends to the bestial times of 1944–45, when Budapest was besieged, the Final Solution devastated Hungary’s Jews, and the war came to an end, and on to the cataclysmic Hungarian Revolution of October 1956. We follow these men from Berlin and Moscow to Switzerland and Holland, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, and of course, from village to city in Hungary. The social and political circumstances of their lives may vary greatly, their sexual and spiritual longings may seem to each of them entirely unique, yet Péter Nádas’s magnificent tapestry unveils uncanny reverberating parallels that link them across time and space.This is Péter Nádas’s masterpiece — eighteen years in the writing, a sensation in Hungary even before it was published, and almost four years in the translating. Parallel Stories is the first foreign translation of this daring, demanding, and momentous novel, and it confirms for an even larger audience what Hungary already knows: that it is the author’s greatest work.

Paris depicts a man’s journey through the labyrinth of his memories, a search for his origins that will uncover an old family secret and turn his world upside down. A mesmerizing and haunting story by award-winning author Marcos Giralt Torrente, a master craftsman calibrating nuance and impact with a true gift.

Su París forma, junto con La ciudad y El lugar, una `trilogía involuntaria` sobre el extrañamiento: los viajes que emprenden sus protagonistas parecen al comienzo incursiones razonables en la realidad cotidiana, pero luego se advierte que en esa `realidad` todo se transforma y se tuerce de continuo, y quien cuenta la historia está siempre un paso detrás de la nuestra en el asombro.

This uneasy, compelling novel begins with a nighttime accident on the streets of Paris. The unnamed narrator, a teenage boy, is hit by a car whose driver he vaguely recalls having met before. The mysterious ensuing events, involving a police van, a dose of ether, awakening in a strange hospital, and the disappearance of the woman driver, culminate in a packet being pressed into the boy’s hand. It is an envelope stuffed full of bank notes. The confusion only deepens as the characters grow increasingly apprehensive; meanwhile, readers are held spellbound.Modiano’s low-key writing style, his preoccupation with memory and its untrustworthiness, and his deep concern with timeless moral questions have earned him an international audience of devoted readers. This beautifully rendered translation brings another of his finest works to an eagerly waiting English-language audience. Paris Nocturne has been named “a perfect book” by Libération, while L’Express observes, “Paris Nocturne is cloaked in darkness, but it is a novel that is turned toward the light.”

Michael Ondaatje's new selection of Mavis Gallant's work gathers some of her stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived. These are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

In Paris, two couples form an intimacy that will change their lives forever. As they discover the clubs and cafés of the eleventh arrondissement, the four become inseparable, united by deeply held convictions about dating strategies, tunnelling in P.O.W. films and, crucially, the role of the Styrofoam cup in American thrillers. Experiencing the exhilarating highs of Ecstasy and sex, they reach a peak of rapture — but the come-down is unexpected and devastating. Dyer fixes a dream of happiness — and its aftermath. Erotic and elegiac, funny and romantic, Paris Trance confirms Dyer as one of Britain's most original and talented writers.

There's a war going on between the earth and the sky, but that doesn’t stop Parsifal, a humble fountain-pen repairman, from revisiting the forest where he was raised. On his journey, Parsifal — a wise fool if there ever was one — encounters several librarians, a therapist, numerous blind people, and Misty, a beautiful woman who may well be under the influence of recreational drugs.Head-spinning and hilarious, Parsifal is a book like no other about the entanglement of the past and present, as well as the limitations of the future.

Even as a chapbook, it was one of Time Out New York's Ten Best Books of 2007, and now Future Tense Books publishes an expanded paperback edition of Partial List of People to Bleach, with six previously uncollected pieces, including the provocative and now-classic essay "The Sentence Is a Lonely Place," and a foreword by Gordon Lish. "Partial List of People to Bleach is at once cruelly honest, precisely painful, and beautifully rendered." — Brian Evenson "Gary Lutz is a master-living proof that, even in our cliche-ridden, denial-drenched, hype-driven age, true originality is still an American possibility." — George Saunders

Winner of the Vick Foundation Novel of the Year Award in 2007, Party Headquarters takes place in the eighties and nineties, during Bulgaria's transition from communist rule to democracy.The book — which is a love story, a parody, and a thriller about a political hoax — opens with the main character visiting his father-in-law, an old communist party boss who is dying, and being tasked with delivering a suitcase filled with one-and-a-half million euros.It's one of Bulgaria's most popular myths: As the communist party fell apart, high ranking officials squirreled away bags and suitcases containing a significant portion of the country's wealth, and that these bags are still circulating through Europe, waiting to be delivered to various conspirators.But this is just the beginning of the corruption and inequality that plagued Bulgaria during this time. While immersing himself in pornography and prostitution, the hero of Party Headquarters reflects back on his life and the emblematic events that took place around that time — the anticommunist protests, the arson attack on the Communist Party Headquarters in Sofia, and, most tragically and crucially, the Chernobyl disaster, during which the families of party officials were sheltered away and fed special, safe food, while the regular citizens suffered.Beautiful and tragic, Party Headquarters is an engrossing testament to the struggles that haunted Bulgaria after the fall of the Soviet Union, many of which continue to resonate today.Before penning the Vick Prize-winning novel Party Headquarters, Georgi Tenev had already published four books, founded the Triumviratus Art Group, hosted The Library television program about books, and written plays that have been performed in Germany, France, and Russia. He is also a screenwriter for film and TV.Angela Rodel earned an MA in linguistics from UCLA and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study and learn Bulgarian.

Que faire de ses penchants?T'assignant cinq heures par jour, un mois durant, à ton ordinateur, tu te donnes pour objet de raconter le souvenir que tu as d'une femme ou autre que tu as désirée ou qui t'a désirée.Tu les prendras dans l'ordre où elles te reviendront en mémoire. Tu les coucheras ensuite dans l'ordre impersonnel de l'alphabet.Mais pourquoi cet exercice, d'une ironie peut-être cruelle?Dissiper ou digresser tes désirs.Car la vie est trop courte pour se résigner à lire des livres mal écrits et coucher avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas.Affaire de style.Ne risques-tu pas, entendant pourtant t'écarter des mœurs de ton temps et esquiver son idolâtrie du désir, d'y succomber?Peut-on échapper à la publicité du désir?Et si, croyant résister à son assujettissement, tu ne faisais que pratiquer cette forme – si française – de résistance qui s'appelle la collaboration?

„Pasaulis pagal Garpą“, nuo pasirodymo 1978 m. sulaukęs 25-ių laidų, tebėra J. Irvingo prozos viršūnė. Tai romanas, kuriuo autorius teigia norėjęs „rimtuolius ne kartą prajuokinti, o jautresnes širdis – sugraudinti“. Jam pavyko abu tie dalykai ir dar vienas – priversti susimąstyti apie tokį priešišką ir nesaugų, absurdišką mūsų laikų pasaulį. 1998 m. J. Irvingas apibendrina, jog šis romanas – apie tėvo baimę dėl savo vaikų: „Toji baimė gyvena net mažiausioje „Pasaulio pagal Garpą“ detalėje... Aš nesu netekęs vaiko. Tiesiog esu tėvas, turintis lakią vaizduotę. Ir vaizduotėje aš kasdien netenku savo vaikų“.

En lugar de subir al avión que debe llevarlo de vuelta a su hogar, un hombre decide en el último momento desafiar al destino y emprender una travesía muy diferente. ¿Podrá recuperar en Roma a la mujer que dejó marchar años atrás? Ignacio no puede saber cuánto queda en Dana de la pasión que los arrebató y se truncó tan injustamente, pero prefiere el vértigo de esta decisión irreflexiva a la atonía en la que ha entrado su vida. Con esta inolvidable historia sobre la fascinación y el infortunio del amor, sobre los golpes ocultos del destino, María de la Pau Janer nos ofrece una magnífica novela, llena de sensualidad, de emociones y de personajes que alcanzan nuestra fibra más íntima.

Prabanga, miesto blizgesys, įspūdingi vakarėliai su garsiais žmonėmis – toks Niujorko įžymybių gyvenimas. Tačiau Brukė patiria, kad kartu su vyro šlove, pinigais ir jų teikiamais malonumais į poros gyvenimą įsibrauna nepasitikėjimas ir neištikimybė. Kiek stipri Džuliano ir Brukės meilė, ar ji nesugrius po kelių paparacų blyksčių?

Iš anglų kalbos vertė Regina Šeškuvienė

„Paskutinė naktis Tvisted Riveryje“ – naujausias, dvyliktas, populiaraus šiuolaikinio amerikiečių rašytojo Džono Irvingo (g. 1942) romanas. Tai kruopščiai aprašyta vingri, tikrai sukrečianti bėglių, tėvo ir sūnaus, po apmaudžios nelaimės sprunkančių nuo penkiasdešimt metų juos persekiojančio absurdiškai žiauraus konsteblio, gyvenimo istorija – lemtingų nelaimių, praradimų, meilės ir vilties istorija, kupina šokiruojančių minčių ir stulbinančių scenų. Džonas Irvingas, kruopščiai ir rūpestingai aprašydamas kiekvieną smulkmeną, sukūrė ištisą visiškai užbaigtą pasaulį, reikšmingų visuomenės pokyčių metraštį ir – svarbiausia – amžinos meilės ir kūrybos galios testamentą. Observer

Romanas „Paslaptingas bičių gyvenimas“ nukelia į 1964-uosius, Pietų Karoliną. Ši knyga pasakoja Lilės Ouvens gyvenimo istoriją, gaubiamą miglotų prisiminimų apie popietę, kai žuvo jos motina. Mergaitę globoja geraširdė juodaodė Rozalina. Šiai įžeidus tris didžiausius miestelio rasistus, jiedviem tenka sprukti į Tiburoną, Pietų Karolinos miestelį, kuriame gyvena Lilės mamos praeities paslaptis. Mergaitė patenka į kerintį bičių, medaus ir Juodosios Madonos pasaulį...

La historia de Pasos sobre cristal, son tres historias en realidad. En la primera tenemos a Graham, un joven artista que se dirige a casa de su amiga Sarah, acompañado de una carpeta con varios dibujos de ella. En segundo lugar está Steven Grout, un tipo verdaderamente extraño, que acaba de renunciar a su puesto de trabajo y que siempre va con casco, huyendo de sus Atormentadores. Y por último tenemos a Quiss y Ajayi, un hombre y una mujer, respectivamente, ya mayores, que están encerrados en un extraño castillo, algunas de cuyas paredes son de cristal, detrás de las cuáles hay peces luminiscentes, y donde pasan los días jugando a estrambóticos juegos de mesa con el fin de poder obtener la opción de responder a un acertijo, y así poder salir libres.