"If you're a fan of Foucault's Pendulum and its kin, you'll enjoy Blas de Roblès' concoction."
Psychodrama meets history meets mystery—vintage Umberto Eco territory, as practiced by French philosophy professor turned novelist Blas de Roblès.
Read full book review >
"Though occasionally slow-moving, this narrative explores major themes of obsession, passion and control."
A novel of obsession—only partially erotic—that spans 50 years of German history, from World War II till the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Read full book review >
"Lackluster characters populate a choppy narrative."
First published in Germany in 1995, this historical novel from Schatzing (The Swarm, 2005, etc.) concerns a 13th-century petty thief who witnesses the murder of a renowned cathedral architect.
Read full book review >
"Complex characters, a deft puzzle and an authoritative sense of place compensate for a pace slower than most modern readers are used to. It's worth noting that Glauser, a diagnosed schizophrenic, wrote most of his novel while institutionalized."
The first English translation of a widely respected crime novel originally published as a serial in 1936.
Read full book review >
"Like a glimpse three-quarters of a century back into a world that has wholly vanished: formal, constrained, class-ridden, quintessentially European. Fascinating."
The first English translation of Czech author Ungar's extremely interesting second novel, published in 1927, preceding the better-known The Maimed (1928, 2002).
Read full book review >
"An exceptional debut, sensitive and rich without sentimentality."
A finely crafted first novel that, in the form of a young woman's childhood recollections of her mother, creates a portrait of the last days of Franco's Spain.
Read full book review >
A Candide-like protagonist stuck in time, at the age of 17, who attracts the attentions of ineffably sinister "primate researchers"—that's the thin premise stretched to unwieldy length in this amiable yet labored futurist comic fantasy by a well-known German graphic artist and playwright.
Read full book review >
A companion volume to Mitchell's (equally fine) earlier translation of Grimmelshausen's classic 1688 satire Simplicissimus, this defiantly earthy first-person narrative (which followed it closely, in 1670) contains the "confession" of the resourceful camp follower and entrepreneur who schemed and prospered throughout the carnage of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48)—and inspired the eponymous heroine of Brecht's epic political play Mother Courage and Her Children In Grimmelshausen's hands, Courage is a resolutely apolitical survivor: a highborn beauty brought low, who combats social and sexual disenfranchisement and victimization with a gusto that blithely negates her creator's intermittent moralizing, and puts her in a class with Defoe's Moll Flanders.
Read full book review >
"Blackly funny and boldly imagined, it's an authentic modernist masterpiece."
A new translation of a phantasmagoric allegorical (1908) novel—the only one completed by the renowned Austrian expressionist graphic artist (1877-1959)—that has often been compared to Mervyn Peake's fabulistic Gormenghast.
Read full book review >
Thank you! You’ll get the first email of recommendations from our critics within a week!
Bummer. There was a problem adding your email address. Please try again.
Subscribe to Pro Connect
Be the first to discover new talent!
Each week, our editors select the one author and one book they believe to be most worthy of your attention and highlight them in our Pro Connect email alert.
Sign up here to receive your FREE alerts.
