New Directions: 473 books

Lyrical, surreal, and yet unsettlingly realistic, The Sinistra Zone swims in the totalitarian backwaters of Eastern Europe Entering a weird, remote hamlet, Andrei calls himself “a simple wayfarer,” but he is in fact highly compromised: he has no identity papers. Taken under the wing of...

A stunning novel set in postwar Romania about language, identity, and loss. Captives, the acclaimed writer Norman Manea's first novel, is a fascinating, kaleidoscopic, and imaginative look into postwar Romania. Divided into three sections–narrated in first-, second-, and third-person voices–Captives...

A breakthrough novel from the acclaimed young American writer Boris Leonidovich, a North American professor who specializes in the history of prison architecture, has been invited to Buenos Aires for an academic conference. He’s planning to present a paper on Moscow’s feared Butyrka prison,...

A revolutionary comic masterpiece, an icon of literature as American pop art, and a book unlike any other, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March breaks all frames. An icon of literature as American Pop Art, Frederic Tuten’s Adventures of Mao on the Long March is a triumphantly witty and...

A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of micro-fiction. A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, César Aira–the author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely one hundred pages long–The Musical Brain...

What’s not to like about Tennessee Williams’s most forthright work about homosexual love, with its gay figure skaters, runaways, and sex? An erotic, sensual, and comic novel that was a generation ahead of its time, Moise and the World of Reason has at its center the need of three people...

Financial Times Book of the Year An adventure of Michelangelo in Constantinople from the “mesmerizing” (New Yorker) and “masterful” (Washington Post) author of Compass In 1506, Michelangelo—a young but already renowned sculptor—is invited by the Sultan of Constantinople to...

Available at last are all the poems by one of the twentieth century's greatest British writers, Dame Muriel Spark: "a true literary artist, acerbic and exhilarating" (London Evening Standard). In the seventy-three poems collected here Muriel Spark works in open forms as well as villanelles,...

A brilliant new translation of the landmark poetry collection by “the most eloquent spokesman and explorer of Arabic modernity” (Edward Said) Written in the early 1960s, Songs of Mihyar the Damascene is widely considered to be the apex of the modernist poetry movement in the Arab world,...

Yoel Hoffmann—“Israel’s celebrated avant-garde genius” (The Forward)—supplies the magic missing link between the infinitesimal and the infinite Part novel and part memoir, Yoel Hoffmann’s Moods is flooded with feelings, evoked by his family, losses, loves, the soul’s hidden powers,...

Because I Was Flesh is the story of Edward Dahlberg’s life as a child and young man, and a portrait in depth of the remarkable woman, his mother Lizzie, who shaped it. Because I Was Flesh is an authentic record from the inferno of modern city life, and a testament of American experience....

A powerful novel about trauma and forgiveness, from the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction During the violence and chaos of the Lebanese Civil War, a car pulls up to a roadblock on a narrow side street in Beirut. After a brief and confused exchange, several rounds of bullets...

**WINNER OF THE 2019 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Publishers Weekly Best Poetry Book of 2018 Forrest Gander’s first book of poems since his Pulitzer finalist Core Samples from the World: a startling look through loss, grief, and regret into the exquisite...

A gorgeous, wide-ranging volume of poetry and essays by Forrest Gander, studded with the work of three great photographers. Forrest Gander’s Core Samples from the World is a magnificent compendium of poetry, photography, and essay (a form of Japanese haibun). Collaborating with three acclaimed...