Grove Atlantic: 1452 books

“France’s conversion is deeply touching . . . This is religious discovery for a postmodern generation.” —Philip Zaleski, Los Angeles Times The tiny, arid Greek island of Patmos is one of the most sacred places in the Christian world—a place of bewitching power, where people come for...

“A remarkable novel” of a post-Communist Russia filled with gangsters and oligarchs, and one man’s shady business deal that could land him in a world of trouble (The Boston Globe). Part speculative fiction, part satire, Let’s Put the Future Behind Us is a romp through 1990s Russia,...

One of the most talented and award-winning writers of his generation, Francisco Goldman’s third novel, The Divine Husband, appeared to wide and rapturous acclaim. Beginning with a single, possibly scandalous love poem by Jose Marti, Cuba’s greatest revolutionary-poet-hero with an infamous secret...

The Pushcart Prize–winning poet’s memoir of his criminal youth and years in prison: a “brave and heartbreaking” tale of triumph over brutal adversity (The Nation). Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “astonishing narrative” of his life before, during, and immediately after the years he spent...

Anton Chekhov was a master whose daring work revolutionized theater, and this was as true of Ivanov, his first full-length play, as of The Cherry Orchard, his last. Building on the success of his acclaimed adaptation of The Seagull, Tom Stoppard returns to Chekhov and the themes of bitter social satire,...

What do the phrases “pro-life,” “intelligent design,” and “the war on terror” have in common? Each of them is a name for something that smuggles in a highly charged political opinion. Words and phrases that function in this special way go by many names. Some writers call them “evaluative-descriptive...

The place is Poland, in the early years of the German occupation. Pornografia's narrator, an author named Witold Gombrowicz, meets a swarthy and overly formal man named Fyderyk at a Warsaw house party, and the two soon become engaged in a business of a dubious (if not downright criminal) nature. When...

This National Book Award–winning novel of power, libido, and morality is “a powerful and profoundly disturbing book” (The New York Times). First published in 1968, Jerzy Kosinski’s classic vision of moral and sexual estrangement captured the deviant undercurrents of the era’s politics...

Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.

Junk is not, like alcohol or a weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. In his debut novel, Junky, Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the...

Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who ever lived and The Republic, composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city--and the perfect mind--laid the foundations for Western culture and has been the cornerstone of Western...

Critically acclaimed on its hardcover publication, and praised for its playful inventiveness and delightful prose, Deb Olin Unferth’s debut novel, Vacation, features three characters-a man, his wife, and a stranger with ties to them both. With his wife suspiciously absent in the evenings, the man,...

A life hangs in the balance of memory in this poignant, witty and “effective feminine counterpoint to . . . Philip Roth’s 2006 novel, ‘Everyman’” by the award-winning author (The Washington Post). Born on the same day as Queen Elizabeth II, Canadian Georgina Danforth Witley is one...

One of Entertainment Weekly’s Ten Best Books of the Year: “A magical novel that even cynics will close with a smile” (People). Everyone in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, knows the story of Hope Jones, who was lost in the tornado of 1978. Her three young children found some stability in their...