An elegant consideration of the Surrealist movement as a global phenomenon and why it continues to resonateWhy does Surrealism continue to fascinate us a century after André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism? How do we encounter Surrealism today? Mark Polizzotti vibrantly reframes the Surrealist movement in contemporary terms and offers insight into why it continues to inspire makers and consumers of art, literature, and culture.Polizzotti shows how...

Highway 61 Revisited resonates because of its enduring emotional appeal. Few songwriters before Dylan or since have combined so effectively the intensely personal with the spectacularly universal. In "Like a Rolling Stone," his gleeful excoriation of Miss Lonely (Edie Sedgwick? Joan Baez? a composite "type"?) fuses with the evocation of a hip new zeitgeist to produce a veritable anthem. In "Ballad of a Thin Man," the younger generation's confusion is thrown back in the Establishme...

An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty—summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate ...

Los Olvidados (1950) established Luis Bunuel's reputation as a world-class director. Set in the slums of Mexico City, it follows the crime-filled and violent lives of group of juvenile delinquents. The film exhibits some of Bunuel's recognisable themes of love's yearnings, social injustice, and surrealism, but with a layer of compassion that sets it apart from many of his other films. In 2003, 'Los Olvidados' was inducted into UNESCO's Memory of the World programme, which preserves documen...

“Echenoz is one of the contemporary literature's rare graceful magicians.” —BookforumJérôme Lindon is a genre-defying meditation on the friendship and working relationship between Jean Echenoz and his editor, the founder of Les Editions de Minuit, Jerome Lindon. Lindon published the work of Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, and Robbe-Grillet, among so many other giants. This voice-driven ramble recounts in candid, understated, and hilarious glimps...

In this seriocomic noir by a “master magician of the contemporary French novel” (The Washington Post), a low-grade film director is embroiled in troubles involving a rampaging elephant, an African militia, and the mystery of a naked man falling from a window to his death.A naked man plummets from a sixth-story window, nearly flattening Robert Bristol. But Bristol, semi-famous director of B-grade adventure flicks, hardly notices: he’s thinking about his nex...

An awardwinning cartoonist adapts the well-regarded French novella by Jean Echenoz in this taut and moving study on grief.A Parisian woman dies in a fire leaving her husband and son behind, bereft.The fire has destroyed all traces of her. The only reminder the men have is a multi-storey mural, a perfume ad, featuring the woman as a young model. In his grief, the son silently walks by the mural every day. The father is loud and passionate in his grief and th...

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021'A dazzling piece of historical re-imagining and a revolutionary sermon, a furious denunciation of inequality' - The judges of the International Booker prize.The fight for equality begins in the streets.From the internationally bestselling author of The Order of the Day: Éric Vuillard once again takes us behind the scenes at a moment when h...

'A thoroughly gripping and mesmerising work of black comedy and political disaster' - GuardianWinner of the 2017 Prix GoncourtÉric Vuillard’s gripping novel The Order of the Day tells the story of the pivotal meetings which took place between the European powers in the run-up to World War Two. What emerges is a fascinating and incredibly moving account of failed diplomacy, broken relationships, and the catastrophic momentu...

A new translation of one of the defining works of the French surrealist movement, an energetic autobiographical novel that is at once both a tumultuous romance story and an initiation into the surrealism of everyday life.In Paris, during the fall of 1926, André Breton met a young woman from the provinces who called herself Nadja because, she said, "in Russian it's the beginning of the word for hope, and because it's only the beginning." Their love affair was brief,...

A writer discovers a set of notes in his notebook and sets off on a journey through the Paris of his past, in search of the woman he loved forty years previously.Set in the Montparnasse district of Paris, the author, Jean, retraces his nocturnal footsteps around the left bank during France's period of decolonisation during the 1960's. He tries to remember what brought him into contact with a gang that frequented the hotel Unic in the area. His quest through seedy cafés and cheap ho...

A writer discovers a set of notes in his notebook and sets off on a journey through the Paris of his past, in search of the woman he loved forty years previously.Set in the Montparnasse district of Paris, the author, Jean, retraces his nocturnal footsteps around the left bank during France's period of decolonisation during the 1960's. He tries to remember what brought him into contact with a gang that frequented the hotel Unic in the area. His quest through seedy cafés and cheap ho...