new directions
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Hunters and the Hunted: The Last Wolf & Herman by László Krasznahorkai
Vastness does not always mean an abyss.
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The Kind of Madness That Is Passion
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone with herself. Maybe never. It was always her–with others, and in these others she was reflected and the others were reflected in her. Nothing was–was pure, she thought without understanding what…
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“And She Went on Her Way Rejoicing”
Muriel Spark and the perennial question: “Am I a woman or an intellectual monster?”
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Exercises in Style
Exercises in Style has been one of the most beloved books in the New Directions catalog since they first published it in 1981.
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The Secret of Evil, by Roberto Bolaño
In one of the stories in Roberto Bolaño’s new collection The Secret of Evil, the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, whose arresting and beastly Jupiter and Seleme graces the American jacket of Bolaño’s 2666, is referenced by a man “present at…
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Varamo
César Aira’s Varamo reaffirms Aira’s place as seminal Latin American writer whose work wanders between bizarre situations and philosophical digressions.
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A Preposterous Proposal, But No, Not Quite
Helen DeWitt’s satirical novel Lightning Rods turns the quotidian American workplace into a cloaked prostitution ring and makes us wonder if it isn’t already one.
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The Singing Caryatids of Modern Moscow
Victor Pelevin’s new novella, Hall of the Singing Caryatids, satirizes contemporary capitalism in a smart and fun critique of what we do for money and with money.
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Javier Marias on KCRW’s Bookworm
Allen Ginsberg claimed that his reading voice was an imitation of the voice with which William Blake spoke to him in his visions and dreams. Once you hear Ginsberg read, you are stuck in his dream forever. Javier Marias, the…