New Directions: 473 books

A classic of modern French literature, the thrilling real-life story of the military hero, ambassador, ladies man, writer, and loving son "I grew up in the certitude that one day I should help give back the earth to those who ennoble it with their courage and warm it with their love." Promise...

From the writer adored by the likes of García Marquez, Calvino, and Francine Prose comes a collection of Hernández's classic tales Piano Stories presents fifteen wonderful works by the great Uruguayan author Felisberto Hernández, “a writer like no other,” as Italo Calvino declares in...

A collection of extraordinary essays by one of the seminal Russian poets of the twentieth century Gennady Aygi’s longtime translator and friend Peter France has compiled this moving collection of tributes dedicated to some of the writers and artists who sustained him while living in the Moscow...

A splendid ironic portrayal of literary Paris and of a young writer’s struggles by one of Spain’s most eminent authors. This brilliantly ironic novel about literature and writing, in Vila-Matas’s trademark witty and erudite style, is told in the form of a lecture delivered by a novelist...

“On the High Wire is fascinating to read. You will learn about the man, his work, his passion, his tenacity and lucidity” (Marcel Marceau) In this poetic handbook, written when he was just twenty-three, the world-famous high-wire artist Philippe Petit offers a window into the world of his...

A dazzling cycle of short stories by one of China’s most revered contemporary writers and one of the world’s leading artist-intellectuals. An Empty Room is the first book by the celebrated Chinese writer Mu Xin to appear in English. A cycle of thirteen tenderly evocative stories written...

Obsession and mastery in their purest states: the story of one dancer’s attempt to win the biggest contest of his life. Every year, at the height of summer, the remote Argentine village of Laborde holds the national malambo contest. Centuries-old, this shatteringly demanding traditional gaucho...

A luminous autobiography by one of England's most original, delightful, writers. In 1938 Henry Green, then thirty-three, dreaded the coming war and decided to "put down what comes to mind before one is killed." Pack My Bag was published in England in 1940. When he wrote it, Green...

A magical, impressionistic autobiography by China’s legendary poet Bei Dao In 2001, to visit his sick father, the exiled poet Bei Dao returned to his homeland for the first time in over twenty years. The city of his birth was totally unrecognizable. “My city that once was had vanished,”...

An intensely beautiful book about one of history’s bleakest periods The Emperor’s Tomb – the last novel Joseph Roth wrote – is a haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a magically evocative paean to the passing of time and the loss of hope. The Emperor’s...

A hypnotic page-turner about the grinding gears of historical change and ruthless palace intrigue in Persia, c. 1848. The King, young Shah Naser, takes to the throne of Persia at a turning point of history: he inherits an enchanted medieval world of harems, eunuchs, and treasures as well as...

The first overview of all Joseph Roth’s journalism: traveling across a Europe in crisis, he declares,“I am a hotel citizen, a hotel patriot.” The Hotel Years gathers sixty-four feuilletons: on hotels; pains and pleasures; personalities; and the deteriorating international situation of...

A unique and personal portrait of the beloved, legendary Swiss writer, finally in English After a nervous breakdown in 1929, Robert Walser spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in mental asylums, closed off from the rest of the world in almost complete anonymity. While at the Herisau...

Tomas Tranströmer’s touching memoir. Written a few years after Transtromer suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak, Memories Look at Me is Tomas Tranströmer’s lyrical autobiography about growing up in Sweden. His story opens with a streak of light, a comet that becomes a brilliant...