FINALIST--2008 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZEIn The Essential Writings of Machiavelli, Peter Constantine has assembled a comprehensive collection that shows the true depth and breadth of a great Renaissance thinker. Refreshingly accessible, these superb new translations are faithful to Machiavelli’s original, beautifully crafted writings.The volume features essays that appear in English for the first time, such as “A Caution to the Medici” and “The Persecution of Africa.” Al...

A brilliant short novel inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s experience as a soldier in the Caucasus, The Cossacks has all the energy and poetry of youth while also foreshadowing the great themes of Tolstoy’s later years. His naïve hero, Olenin, is a young nobleman who is disenchanted with his privileged and superficial existence in Moscow and hopes to find a simpler life in a Cossack village. As Olenin foolishly involves himself in their violent clashes with neighboring Chechen tribesmen an...

In three short narratives, Kadare evokes a defining moment in European history28 June 1389, the Field of the Blackbirds. A Christian army made up of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians confront an Ottoman army. In ten hours the battle is over, and the Muslims possess the field; an outcome that has haunted the vanquished ever since.28 June 1989, the Serb Leader Slobodan Milosevic launches his campaign for a fresh massacre of the Albanians, the majority ...

"Amazing not only as literature but as biography." —Richard Bernstein, The New York TimesOne of the great masterpieces of Russian literature, the Red Cavalry cycle retains today the shocking freshness that made Babel's reputation when the stories were first published in the 1920s. Using his own experiences as a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army during the war against Poland, Babel brings to life an astonishing cast of characters from t...

Machiavelli’s highly influential treatise on political power'It is far safer to be feared than loved...'The Prince shocked Europe on publication with its advocacy of ruthless tactics for gaining absolute power and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccoló Machiavelli drew on his own experience of office under the turbulent Florentine republic, rejecting traditional values of political theory and recognising the com...

The First New Translation in Forty YearsSet sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogol’s epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulba’s two sons.As Robert Kaplan writes in his Introduction, “[Taras Bulba] has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive,...

Interested in Japan's infamous and colorful sex trade? This guide to sex in Japan presents the in's and out's with extensive details and background information.Japan's Sex Trade offers a probing, step by step tour of the country's astonishing professional sex scene: salacious soaplands, hedonistic health clubs, and startling S&M snackbars, as well as the colorful characters who populate them and the off-color language they use.High...

This long-awaited translation of Confessions, which Stephen Greenblatt describes as central to the legacy of Adam and Eve, enlivens the beguiling world of late antiquity.No modern, well-versed literature lover can call her education complete without having read Augustine’s Confessions. One of the most original works of world literature, it is the first autobiography ever written, influencing writers from Montaigne to Rousseau, Virginia Woolf to Ge...

Newly translated by Peter ConstantineEdited and with an Introduction by Leo DamroschThe Essential Writings of Rousseau collects the best and most indispensable work of one of the world’s most influential writers. A towering figure of Enlightenment thought, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also one of that movement’s most passionate and persuasive critics. His extraordinarily original observations on politics, education, and human nature we...

Russian Nobel prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is widely acknowledged as one of the most important figures—and perhaps the most important writer—of the last century. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the first English translation of his memoir of the West, Between Two Millstones, Book 1, is being published. Fast-paced, absorbing, and as compelling as the earlier installments of his memoir The Oak and the Calf (1975), Between Two Millstones b...

Making Out in Indonesian is a fun, accessible and thorough Indonesian phrasebook and guide to the Indonesian language as it's really spoken.Kamu sangat menarik! Bisa kita ketemu lagi?—(You're very attractive! Shall we meet again?) Answer this correctly in Indonesian and you may be going on a hot date. Incorrectly, and you could be hurting someone's feelings or getting a slap! Indonesian classes and textbooks tend to spend a lot of time re...

Much more than a Japanese phrasebook, this entertaining guide to Japanese slang is full of interesting and hilarious anecdotes and advice.Japanese Slang Uncensored reveals in vivid detail the richness of Japanese slang in all its amusing, bizarre, and shocking forms. The book dives unblushingly into Japan's fascinating secret languages, the ingo (hidden words) used by thieves, prostitutes, sushi chefs, pickpockets, Buddhist monks, and other colorf...