The 69 Greatest Travel Books, Fiction   |   READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Essential Books These 67 items are available for $844, including
U.S. shipping, a 25% discount (Item no. )
 
Absurdistan  •  Gary Shteyngart
LITERATURE •  2007 •  PAPER  • 333 PAGES
Shteyngart, a young Russian immigrant himself, riffs on the privilege and behavior of the new breed of Russian oligarchs along with many more less politically correct targets in this outrageous first novel. The scene shifts from the Bronx to contemporary St. Petersburg and oil-besotted Absurdsvani, all as viewed through the fractured lens of Misha Vainberg, "the rap-music-obsessed, grossly overweight son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia." (RUS321, $15.00)
  Absurdistan
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  •  Mark Twain
LITERATURE •  1985 •  PAPER  • 336 PAGES • YOUNG ADULTS
An enormously influential American book, Twain's masterpiece of boyhood adventure is as much about America's growing pains as it is about Huck's coming of age. As crises of adolescence go, Huck's dawning awareness of the slave Jim's humanity is about as big as they come. Ages 12 and up. (USS41, $7.00)
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mountolive  •  Lawrence Durrell
LITERATURE •  1991 •  PAPER  • 376 PAGES
The third book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranean city in the years before WWII. (EGY258, $16.00)
 
Justine  •  Lawrence Durrell
LITERATURE •  1977 •  PAPER  • 245 PAGES
The first of Durrell's acclaimed "Alexandria Quartet," this novel concerns the romantic and intellectual fortunes of a group of Europeans in Egypt on the eve of World War II. Not every reader will be won by Durrell's dense and winding prose, but those who persevere may come to love his portrait of a hot and sinister city where lovers are lost and hopes are broken. (EGY87, $15.00)
 
Balthazar  •  Lawrence Durrell
LITERATURE •  1991 •  PAPER  • 256 PAGES
The second book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranean city in the years before WWII. (EGY257, $16.00)
 
Clea  •  Lawrence Durrell
LITERATURE •  1993 •  PAPER  • 288 PAGES
The final book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranean city in the years before WWII. (EGY259, $16.00)
 
The Baron in the Trees  •  Italo Calvino
LITERATURE •  1977 •  PAPER  • 228 PAGES
Calvino's fable starts in the 1760s on an Italian estate with a twelve year old nobleman climbing up into a tree to defy an order from his father. There he stays through all the transformation of Italian society. (ITL995, $13.95)
 
The Big Sleep  •  Raymond Chandler
LITERATURE •  1998 •  PAPER  • 231 PAGES
The classic crime novel that inspired the classic movie and introduced the world to its most famous hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe. Here is a journey into the dark underworld of 1930's Los Angeles from the master of the genre. (CAL17, $14.00)
  The Big Sleep
Carmen and Other Stories  •  Prosper Merimee  •  Nicholas Jotcham
LITERATURE •  1999 •  PAPER  • 361 PAGES
A sophisticated Parisian, Merimee preferred tales of high drama, banditry, outlaws and outcasts set in exotic locales, preferably in the past. This collection of nine stories includes: Carmen, the source for the opera; Columba, set in Corsica; the Etruscan Vase, one of his Parisian tales; The Storming of the Redoubt, involving Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign; and Lokis, set in the forests of Medieval Lithuania. (FRN201, $13.95)
 
Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage and other Stories  •  Maria Thomas
LITERATURE •  2007 •  PAPER  • 232 PAGES
Drawn from the author's time in Kenya and Tanzania, this collection of fourteen short stories, originally published in 1987, vividly portrays the experiences of American expatriates in Africa, as well as the lives of ordinary Africans. Twentieth anniversary edition. (EAF163, $12.00)
  Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage and other Stories
Cousin Bette  •  Honore de Balzac
LITERATURE •  2008 •  PAPER  • 468 PAGES
During the 1840s Paris, a bourgeois family is brought to ruin by the machinations of an embittered spinster. (FRN787, $13.00)
 
Crime and Punishment  •  Fyodor Dostoevsky  •  David McDuff
LITERATURE •  2002 •  PAPER  • 647 PAGES
The greatest detective story ever told and an inspiration to Freud in developing his psychoanalytic theory, this thriller of murder and redemption, set in St. Petersburg and redolent of its atmosphere, details the tragic, personal consequences of isolation, alienation, cynicism, and nihilism and sets the stage for the great social tragedy to come in the 20th century. (RUS18, $15.00)
  Crime and Punishment
The Day of Judgment  •  Salvatorre Satta  •  Patrick Creagh
LITERATURE •  1979 •  PAPER  • 308 PAGES
Satta delves into the traditions and folkways of Sardinia of a century ago in this enduring, posthumously published novel. (ITL997, $14.00)
 
Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust  •  Nathanael West
LITERATURE •  2009 •  PAPER  • 191 PAGES
West's two classic short novels, one set in New York and the other in Hollywood, dramatically depict the destructive forces of modern American life. The Day of the Locust is the classic novel on the tragic life behind the scenes of Hollywood's golden age. (CAL259, $11.95)
  Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust
Dead Lagoon, An Aurelio Zen Mystery  •  Michael Dibdin
MYSTERY •  1995 •  PAPER  • 297 PAGES
Dibdin -- a master of ambiguous settings, shady dealings and fast-paced prose -- returns to Venice in this sixth book in the thoroughly enjoyable Aurelio Zen series. It may be his best, the city a perfect match for the knowing charm of Dibdin's detective. (ITL577, $14.95)
  Dead Lagoon, An Aurelio Zen Mystery
Death in Venice and Other Tales  •  Thomas Mann
LITERATURE •  1999 •  PAPER  • 384 PAGES
Neugroschel's fresh translations of Mann's celebrated title tale and 11 other classic stories capture the sensuality of the German original. (ITL996, $12.00)
 
Don Quixote  •  Miguel de Cervantes  •  Edith Grossman
LITERATURE •  2003 •  PAPER  • 976 PAGES
The 400-year-old landmark novel (the most famous work in Spanish literature) in a sparkling new translation. Edith Grossman (better known for her translations of contemporary masters like Gabriel Garcia Marquez) aims for uninflected, accessible prose, dumping the quaint, old-fashioned tone and mock-chivalry of earlier translations. Fear not, it's an absorbing tale, and quite funny. This sparkling translation into lively, modern English makes the story of a mad romantic and his sidekick even more entertaining. (SPN211, $16.99)
  Don Quixote
Gilgamesh, A Verse Narrative  •  Herbert Mason
LITERATURE •  2003 •  PAPER  • 128 PAGES
Mason's retelling of the grand, timeless themes of love and death, loss and reparations within the stirring tale of a hero-king and his doomed friend. (IRQ24, $8.95)
 
Far Tortuga  •  Peter Matthiessen
LITERATURE •  1988 •  PAPER  • 408 PAGES
Matthiessen's pleasurable fifth novel captures the rhythms and allure of life at sea -- and the folklore of the dying Grand Cayman turtle fishery. (CRB236, $18.00)
  Far Tortuga
A Fine Balance  •  Rohinton Mistry
LITERATURE •  1997 •  PAPER  • 624 PAGES • FAVORITE
The secret to life, according to a recurring character in this sprawling tale, is "to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair." Set in 1975 in an unnamed Indian "city by the sea," which seems to bear a striking resemblance to Bombay, this tender novel follows the intermingled fortunes of a Parsi widow, a college student who is her boarder, and two Hindu tailors trying to make their way in the city. Each character is meticulously drawn, and the often harrowing background stories (including some murderous caste violence in the tailors' family) are interweaved through the main narrative, which finds the four thrown briefly, and eventually very happily, together in a tiny flat. All this is set against the background of Indira Gandhi's "emergency Raj," in which civil liberties were essentially suspended. It's all profoundly moving, a rare window into the cultural and religious maelstrom of India. One of the best things we've read on India, and a fine piece of literature. A Booker Prize finalist. (IDA92, $17.00)
  A Fine Balance
For Whom the Bell Tolls  •  Ernest Hemingway
LITERATURE •  1995 •  PAPER  • 471 PAGES
This great novel of the Spanish Civil War centers around four days in the life of a young American in the International Brigades attached to an anti-fascist guerrilla unit in the mountains. One of the best war novels of all time, this is the story of love and loyalty, courage, and the tragic death of an ideal. (SPN19, $16.00)
  For Whom the Bell Tolls
Good Morning, Midnight  •  Jean Rhys
LITERATURE •  1986 •  PAPER  • 189 PAGES
A woman encounters a life filled with desires and emotions when she returns to Paris after suffering from a bout of depression and alcoholism in London. (FRN786, $13.95)
 
A Hazard of New Fortunes  •  William Dean Howells
LITERATURE •  2001 •  PAPER  • 449 PAGES
A self-made millionaire and a social revolutionary are at odds with each other in a novel set against the background of a 19th-century New York streetcar strike. (NYC201, $17.00)
 
Heart of Darkness, with Congo Diary  •  Joseph Conrad
LITERATURE •  2007 •  PAPER  • 136 PAGES
A monumentally influential literary work, this short story tells of Marlow's harrowing journey into the Belgian Congo. Rich with irony, this story blurs the lines between savagery and civilization. This edition also includes selections from Conrad's journal while he was in the Congo, creating a blueprint for his later writings. (AFR46, $9.00)
  Heart of Darkness, with Congo Diary
A High Wind in Jamaica  •  Richard Hughes
LITERATURE •  1999 •  PAPER  • 290 PAGES
First published in 1929, this is the thrilling novel of a group of children who set off to England on a ship after their home in Jamaica is destroyed by a hurricane. Their vessel is taken over by a crew of pirates and the Caribbean adventure becomes part hallucinatory fantasy, part unsentimental commentary on the realities of the child mind. For readers of all ages, this classic was named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library. (CRB57, $14.00)
  A High Wind in Jamaica
Hopscotch  •  Julio Cortazar
LITERATURE •  1987 •  PAPER  • 564 PAGES
When La Maga, his mistress, disappears, Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris, decides to return home to Buenos Aires. (ARG93, $17.00)
 
A House for Mr. Biswas  •  V.S. Naipaul
LITERATURE •  2000 •  PAPER  • 564 PAGES
With accolades by the likes of Paul Theroux and an introduction by Ian Baruma, this novel comes with a well deserved pedigree. Described as Dickensian in scope, it tells the story of an outsider struggling to find a place for himself in the complex society of Trinidad. Like all of Naipaul's work, it has as its subtext issues of race, class and his own family background. Poor Mr. Biswas finally gets his house in this comic masterpiece. (CRB20, $15.95)
  A House for Mr. Biswas
The Inheritance of Loss  •  Kiran Desai
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 336 PAGES
Alternating between a once grand household in northern India and the life of the cook's son in New York, this novel by the marvelous and wise Desai skewers the aspirations and reality of both worlds. Happily, she immerses the reader in the particulars of place. Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize. (IDA303, $14.95)
  The Inheritance of Loss
Journey to the End of the Night  •  Louis-Ferdinand Celine
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 453 PAGES
Originally published to shocked reviews in 1932 France, a scathing literary critique of what the writer believed to be the poor judgment and hypocrisy of society follows the travels of petit-bourgeois anti-hero Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I and the African jungle to America and Paris. (TVL463, $16.95)
 
Kitchen  •  Banana Yoshimoto
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 152 PAGES
Yoshimoto's dazzling English-language debut is emotionally complex and sweetly rendered, following an orphaned young woman as she discovers a new family in the home of a fellow student and his mother. (JPN325, $14.00)
  Kitchen
Lady Chatterley's Lover  •  D. H. Lawrence
LITERATURE •  2008 •  PAPER  • 400 PAGES
Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husband's gamekeeper. Can she find equality with Mellors, despite the vast gulf between their positions in society? (GBR816, $14.00)
 
Life and Fate  •  Vasily Grossman
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 896 PAGES
Modeled on Tolstoy's War and Peace, this novel gives a sweeping account of Soviet life during World War II. (RUS299, $24.95)
  Life and Fate
Little Infamies, Stories  •  Panos Karnezis
LITERATURE •  2004 •  PAPER  • 292 PAGES
In a collection of interconnected stories set in a small Greek village, such characters as the local priest, prostitute, doctor, centaur, and parrot experience passion, humor, and the loss of magic in the face of harsh reality. (GRE359, $17.00)
  Little Infamies, Stories
The Little Sister  •  Raymond Chandler
MYSTERY •  1988 •  PAPER  • 250 PAGES
Sleuth Philip Marlowe soon discovers that his new case is more complicated than his beautiful and mysterious client had led him to believe, as he becomes entangled in the dangerous and glamorous world of Hollywood filmmaking. (CAL258, $14.00)
 
Lolita  •  Vladimir Nabokov
LITERATURE •  1989 •  PAPER  • 317 PAGES
A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him. (USA335, $15.00)
  Lolita
The Lover  •  Marguerite Duras
LITERATURE •  1998 •  PAPER  • 117 PAGES
A haunting tale of coming-of-age in Indochina during the 1930s, beautifully evoking the period and place and the complex emotions of a young girl, her family, and her wealthy Chinese lover. (CBD09, $12.00)
  The Lover
Lucy  •  Jamaica Kincaid
LITERATURE •  2002 •  PAPER  • 176 PAGES
Kincaid's transporting tale of a young au pair from the West Indies coming of age in New York. (NYC202, $14.00)
 
The Makioka Sisters  •  Tanizaki Junichiro
LITERATURE •  1995 •  PAPER  • 530 PAGES
The story of a merchant family in prewar Osaka and the struggle of four beautiful sisters to maintain their position in society after the death of their parents, also made into a delightful film by Ichikawa. Janichiro evokes old Osaka and the relationship amonghte sisters in rich detail. (JPN41, $16.00)
  The Makioka Sisters
The Man Without Qualities: Volume I, A Short Introduction and Pseudoreality Prevails  •  Robert Musil  •  Sophie Wilkins  •  Burton Pike
LITERATURE •  1996 •  PAPER
The first volume in German author Robert Musil's unfinished epic masterpiece, set just before World War I in Vienna. Part of a two volume set restored with a new translation and including, for the first time in English, the complete existing text, it is the story of a former soldier who finds himself at the center of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The second volume is also available (AST38). (AST37, $23.00)
 
The Man Without Qualities: Volume II, Into the Millennium and from the Posthumous Papers  •  Robert Musil  •  Sophie Wilkins  •  Burton Pike
LITERATURE •  1996 •  PAPER
The second of two volumes in Musil's sprawling story of pre-World War I Vienna and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Musil died before he could complete the entire epic, but this new translation incorporates all the text he ever wrote. Volume I is also available (AST37). (AST38, $27.50)
 
The Meadow  •  James Galvin
TRAVEL NARRATIVE •  1993 •  PAPER  • 240 PAGES
Galvin's lyrical, personal memoir of ranch life along the Colorado-Wyoming border is rich with beautiful imagery and unforgettable characters. (USW528, $16.00)
  The Meadow
Midnight's Children  •  Salman Rushdie
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 533 PAGES • FAVORITE
Salman Rushdie's greatest book is a madcap, comic, unrestrained novel that takes as its subject the birth of modern India. The narrator, born at the stroke of India's independence on August 15, 1947, is a proxy for the nation itself, and the history of his family is also the history of India. (IDA12, $16.00)
  Midnight's Children
Money, A Suicide Note  •  Martin Amis
LITERATURE •  2010 •  PAPER  • 256 PAGES
While simultaneously shooting his first feature film in New York and living a decadent lifestyle, John Self, one of London's top commercial directors, discovers how distasteful the pursuit of pleasure can be. (NYC200, $15.00)
  Money, A Suicide Note
Nadja  •  Andre Breton
LITERATURE •  1960 •  PAPER  • 160 PAGES
Nadja, originally published in France in 1928, is the first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written, a book which defined that movement's attitude toward everyday life.The principal narrative is an account of the author's relationship with a girl in the city of Paris, the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life. The first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of the work--pictures of various 'surreal' people, places, and objects which the author visits or is haunted by in Nadja's presence and which inspire him to meditate on their reality or lack of it. (FRN785, $13.00)
 
The Names  •  Don DeLillo
LITERATURE •  1989 •  PAPER  • 339 PAGES
In an expatriate's world of turmoil and danger, American risk analyst James Axton learns of a ritual-murder cult in the Aegean and follows the trail to its secret meanings in the ancient city of Lahore. (GRE358, $15.00)
 
Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard  •  Joseph Conrad
LITERATURE •  2007 •  PAPER
In the harbor town of Sulaco in a fictional country between the Andes and Pacific, a vivid cast of characters play out scenes of corruption and greed. (SAM136, $16.00)
 
The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel  •  Isaac Babel
LITERATURE •  2002 •  PAPER  • 511 PAGES
An authoritative edition of Isaac Babel's powerful short fiction, edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine. This edition includes among its treasures his early Red Cavalry Stories and The Odessa Tales, masterpieces that draw on Babel's experiences. This work follows in the wake of the extraordinary Complete Works of Isaac Babel by the same team. (RUS171, $18.95)
 
The Odyssey  •  Homer  •  Robert Fagles
LITERATURE •  1997 •  PAPER  • 541 PAGES
Translator Robert Fagles captures the poetry and power of The Odyssey in this translation, celebrated for its clarity and expressiveness. (GRE45, $17.00)
  The Odyssey
One Hundred Years of Solitude  •  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 417 PAGES
The breathtaking, life-altering, much-celebrated tale of life and love on most everyone's list of the greatest books of all time, ours included. It's setting and themes are universal. (SAM27, $14.99)
  One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road  •  Jack Kerouac
LITERATURE •  2008 •  PAPER  • 416 PAGES
Kerouac's now-classic account of his travels across 1950's America, famously presented to his publisher as one continuous 120-foot-long roll of paper in all its raw and unedited authenticity. (USA16, $17.00)
  On the Road
The Passion  •  Jeanette Winterson
LITERATURE •  1997 •  PAPER  • 176 PAGES
A novel by award winning author Jeanette Winterson, it tells the stories of Henri, a cook to Napoleon, and Villanelle, the daughter of a gondolier. Both are characters driven by their passions -- Henri's is for Napoleon, while Villanelle's is for a beautiful woman. Lyrical, thought provoking, and immensely creative. (FRN148, $14.95)
 
The Pearl  •  John Steinbeck
LITERATURE •  2002 •  PAPER  • 90 PAGES
In Steinbeck's beloved tale a poor fisherman in La Paz dreams of wealth and happiness for his family when he finds a priceless pearl. (MEX243, $12.00)
  The Pearl
The Plague  •  Albert Camus
LITERATURE •  1991 •  PAPER  • 308 PAGES
Chaos prevails when the bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal city of Oran. (NAF64, $14.95)
  The Plague
The Professor's House  •  Willa Cather
LITERATURE •  1990 •  PAPER  • 272 PAGES
Cather's accomplished 1925 novel includes a story-within-a-story of explorer Tom Outland, a character modeled after Richard Wetherill, the rancher who brought the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde (called Blue Mesa in the novel) to the world's attention. She writes: "I saw a little city of stone, asleep. It was as still as a sculpture…looking down into the canyon with the calmness of eternity…I knew at once that I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries." (SWU258, $15.00)
  The Professor's House
Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick  •  Herman Melville
LITERATURE •  1996 •  HARD COVER  • 1437 PAGES
This Library of America edition includes all three of Melville's great novels of adventures at sea. (USE463, $40.00)
 
The Savage Detectives  •  Roberto Bolano
LITERATURE •  2008 •  PAPER  • 648 PAGES
Chronicles the strange journey of two Latin American poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, as seen through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. (WLD158, $16.00)
 
The Sheltering Sky  •  Paul Bowles
LITERATURE •  2005 •  PAPER  • 313 PAGES
Bowles' most famous work, the tale of three travelers whose lives unravel in the desert of North Africa. Originally published in 1949. (NAF09, $14.99)
  The Sheltering Sky
The Shipping News  •  E. Annie Proulx
LITERATURE •  1994 •  PAPER  • 337 PAGES
An international bestseller that put Newfoundland on the world stage, this lyrical novel conjures the tough life of a recently divorced journalist struggling to get through the day in a remote fishing town. Populated by wonderfully eccentric characters, it is the tale of a prodigal son returned home, vivid in its description of the place. You won't be able to put it down. (NFL03, $16.00)
  The Shipping News
Snow Country  •  Edward G. Seidensticker  •  Yasunari Kawabata
LITERATURE •  1996 •  PAPER  • 175 PAGES
A lyrical, moving short novel about the love affair between a prosperous Tokyo businessman and a young geisha from the mountains, set at a spa in the snowy mountains. This novel earned Kawabata the Nobel Prize for literature. Masterfully translated by Edward Seidensticker. (JPN40, $14.00)
  Snow Country
A Sport and a Pastime  •  James Salter
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 136 PAGES
Salter chronicles the arc of a love affair between a young college dropout and his rural French girlfriend on a road-trip across the French countryside. (FRN788, $14.00)
 
Suttree  •  Cormac McCarthy
LITERATURE •  1995 •  PAPER  • 471 PAGES
In McCarthy's indelible fourth novel Cornelius Suttree renounces his prominent Knoxville family to live in a houseboat on the banks of the Tennessee River. (USE464, $15.95)
 
Texaco  •  Patrick Chamoiseau
LITERATURE •  1995 •  PAPER  • 401 PAGES
A winner of France's prestigious Prix Goncourt weaves a mythic, picaresque history of his native Martinique and its Creole culture that centers around the narrator, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, and the colorful inhabitants of the shantytown of Texaco. (CRB237, $15.95)
 
Ulysses, The Gabler Edition  •  James Joyce
LITERATURE •  1986 •  PAPER  • 649 PAGES
This landmark work in the history of literature is by turns a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a reimagining of Homer's Odyssey, and a dazzling tour of turn-of-the-century Dublin. Emeritus Professor of English at Dartmouth, whose 24 lectures on Ulysses have been recorded for The Great Courses series, recommends this 1986 edition, as edited by Walter Gabler and a three-member advisory academic committee established by the Joyce estate. (IRE131, $21.00)
  Ulysses, The Gabler Edition
Whiteman  •  Tony D'Souza
LITERATURE •  2007 •  PAPER  • 279 PAGES
Refusing to leave his violence-charged post in an African Muslim village after his funding is cut off, maverick American relief worker Jack Diaz, at the side of his village guardian, Mamadou, gains insights into the region's hunting, farming, culture, and struggles with AIDS (WAF129, $13.00)
  Whiteman
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle  •  Haruki Murakami  •  Jay Rubin
LITERATURE •  1998 •  PAPER  • 607 PAGES
Novelist Murakami's take on nationalism, miltarism and Japanese history unfolds in modern-day Tokyo, Murakami's usual element. As in his other novels, the city is hip, frenetic and westernized -- this book opens with its protagonist cooking spaghetti -- but in this book Tokyo is also a place with a past. The narrator discovers how much of a past when he meets a former imperial soldier who witnessed untellable atrocities during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. We say "untellable," but this is not a book for the squeamish. It is an unstinting, weighty book by a major modern novelist. (JPN107, $16.95)
 
A Woman in Jerusalem  •  Abraham B. Yehoshua
LITERATURE •  2007 •  PAPER  • 237 PAGES
Assigned the difficult task of identifying and burying the victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, a human resources representative reluctantly pieces together the woman's past as a former Soviet engineer and a non-Jewish person on a religious pilgrimage. (ISR69, $14.00)
  A Woman in Jerusalem
Zeno's Conscience  •  Italo Svevo
LITERATURE •  2003 •  PAPER  • 464 PAGES
William Weaver's deft translation of Italo Svevo's charming and splendidly idiosyncratic comic novel, originally published as the Confessions of Zeno -- and hailed by James Joyce as a masterpiece. The book conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Trieste businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno's interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship of the beautiful yet unresponsive Ada, his unexpected-and unexpectedly happy-marriage to Ada's homely sister Augusta, and his affair with a shrill-voiced aspiring singer. (ITL998, $16.95)
 



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