"Sergio Chejfec is an admirable writer." —Patti Smith“Could anyone possibly believe that writing doesn’t exist? It would be like denying the existence of rain.”The perfect green notebook forms the basis for Sergio Chejfec’s work, collecting writing, and allowing it to exist in a state of permanent possibility, or, as he says, “The written word is also capable of waiting for the next opportunity to appear and to continue to reveal i...

New novel from BTBA finalist about a man obsessed with understanding the working-class via a love affair with a woman.

Sebaldian in nature, Chejfec's My Two Worlds is, according to Enrique Vila-Matas, the future of the novel.

A world-spanning intellectual thriller in the vein of Sebald

A writer remembers his childhood friend, M, who was disappeared in Argentina's Dirty War.

Aira's latest concerns a reluctant but powerful doctor who finally decides to use his healing powers to help a hopeless patient.César Aira’s newest novel in English is not about a conventional doctor. Single,in his forties, and poor, Dr. Aira is a skeptic. His personality — his weaknesses,whims, and pet peeves — is summed up in a series of digressions and regressions but he has a very special gift for miracles. He no longer cares about miracles,however, and has no ...

New in the New Directions Pearls series: an extremely rich mad scientist attempts to clone a leading genius in a bid to take over the world.César is a translator who’s fallen on very hard times due to the global economic downturn; he is also an author, and a mad scientist hell-bent on world domination. On a visit to the beach he intuitively solves an ancient riddle, finds a pirate’s treasure, and becomes a very wealthy man. Even so, César’s bid for world domination...

Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet is a modernist masterwork that has now taken on a similar iconic status to Ulysses, The Trial or In Search of Lost Time. This complete and unabridged edition – published in Penguin Modern Classics - is edited and translated with an introduction by Richard Zenith'The best English-language version we are likely to see for a long time, if ever' - The Guardian

First published in 1974 and republished following the success of Frayn's masterly work of philosophy, The Human Touch, Constructions is a dazzling, thought-provoking and fascinating book which explores some of the great problems in philosophy and of everyday life.

Lyn Hejinian is among the most prominent of contemporary American poets. Her poem My Life has garnered accolades and fans inside and outside academia. First published in 1980, and revised in 1987 and 2002, My Life is now firmly established in the postmodern canon. This Wesleyan edition includes the 45-part prose poem sequence along with a closely related ten-part work titled My Life in the Nineties. An experimental intervention into the autobiographical genre, My Life explores the many way...

A provocative, challenging masterpiece by John Ashbery that set a new standard for the modern prose poem"The pathos and liveliness of ordinary human communication is poetry to me," John Ashbery has said of this controversial work, a collection of three long prose poems originally published in 1972, adding, " Three Poems tries to stay close to the way we talk and think without expecting what we say to be recorded or remembered."The effect of these pr...

Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke offers three intimate, eloquent meditations that map a self-reflexive journey from Alaska to the Austria of his childhood, while illuminating the act of writing itself.In his "Essay on Tiredness," Handke transforms an everyday experience--often precipitated by boredom--into a fascinating exploration of the world of slow motion, differentiating degrees of fatigue, the types of weariness, its rejuvenating effects, as well as its erotic,...