Simon Leys' cultural and political commentary has long been legendary for its profundity and acerbic wit. In The Hall of Uselessness his most significant essays are finally gathered together, on subjects ranging from China to Orwell, from Quixotism to the sea.Leys feuds with Christopher Hitchens, ponders the popularity of Victor Hugo and analyses whether Nabokov's unfinished novel should ever have been published. He dissects Mao's Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge, a...

With Stendhal is a delightful portrait of the nineteenth century French novelist Henri Beyle, better known to us as Stendhal.Two linked texts, introduced, annotated and translated into English for the first time by multi-award-winning author Simon Leys, illuminate the life and mind of the great writer.The first piece is a set of impressions and memories written by Stendhal's famous friend Prosper Mérimée. Several vignettes reveal Stendhal's character – charismati...

In this deliciously sardonic fable, Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from imprisonment on the isle of St. Helena, where a petty officer will impersonate him. The exiled emperor becomes a cabin hand on a crayfish schooner, returns to the Continent under an alias, takes a tourist excursion to the battlefield of Waterloo and eventually makes his way to Paris, where loyal Bonapartists are mourning the death of their hero. Leys writes an elegant, precise prose that ironically evokes the Napoleonic ag...

ʻA book is a mirror; if an ape looks into it, an apostle is hardly likely to look out.’ –G. C. Lichtenberg‘The desire to go into politics is usually indicative of some sort of personality disorder, and it is precisely those who want power most that should be kept furthest from it.’ –Arthur Koestler‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.’ –ThoreauIn this wonderfully entertaining collection of quotations, Simon Leys gathers insights and bons mots from a m...

NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINAL: Simone Weil’s searing argument against partisan politics will speak to modern U.S. citizens who are fed up with Congressional infighting and legislative deadlock.“One of the most brilliant and original minds of 20th-century France.” —The New York TimesSimone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she cha...

‘Political parties are a marvellous mechanism ... If one were to entrust the organisation of public life to the devil, he could not invent a more clever device.’Here Simon Leys translates for the first time into English an essay by the remarkable Simone Weil – philosopher, activist, mystic – which makes a case for the corrupting effect of political parties on political life, and calls for their abolition. This is a dazzling account of the perils of political conformity, wr...

This collection of reflective essays forms a "spiritual autobiography" of André Gide, a key figure of French lettersAndré Gide, a literary and intellectual giant of twentieth-century France, mines his memories and personal observations in this collection of essays. Gide's reflections and commentary masterfully showcase his delicate writing style and evocative sensibility, yielding new insights on writers such as Goethe and contemporaries Joseph Con...

`What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.'Always provocative, the Friedrich Nietzsche of Beyond Good and Evil (1886) is at once sceptical psychologist and philosopher-seer, passionately unmasking European society with his piercing insights and uncanny prescience. This masterpiece of his maturity considers quintessential Nietzschean topics such as the origins and nature of Judeo-Christian morality; the end of philosophical dogmatism and beginning of perspectivism; t...

Tender is the Night chronicles Dick Diver's marriage to the mercurial Nicole. Their leisurely existence on the Riviera, their infidelities, Dick's excessive drinking, and ultimately, Nicole's descent into schizophrenia, underpin this brutally honest take on Fitzgerald's own life with his wife Zelda.Sayre Street Books offers the world's greatest literature in easy to navigate, beautifully designed digital editions.

A Major New TranslationThe Red and the Black, Stendhal’s masterpiece, is the story of Julien Sorel, a young dreamer from the provinces, fueled by Napoleonic ideals, whose desire to make his fortune sets in motion events both mesmerizing and tragic. Sorel’s quest to find himself, and the doomed love he encounters along the way, are delineated with an unprecedented psychological depth and realism. At the same time, Stendhal weaves together the social...

Valtesse de la Bigne was a celebrated nineteenth-century Parisian courtesan. She was painted by Manet and inspired Emile Zola, who immortalised her in his scandalous novel Nana. Her rumoured affairs with Napoleon III and the future Edward VII kept gossip columns full.But her glamourous existence hid a dark secret: she was no Comtesse. She was born into abject poverty, raised on a squalid Paris backstreet; the lowest of the low. Yet she transformed herself into an enchantress who po...