Open letter (Mehr als 3.300 Ergebnisse)

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "I read Giulio Mozzi's first book with real enthusiasm. What struck me most was his everyday language. Even when his subjects rely on metaphor, his words are plain, and so turn mysterious."--Federico Fellini Giulio Mozzi's first book, This Is the Garden (winner of the 1993 Premio Mondello), astonished the Italian literary world for its commanding vision and the beauty of its prose. In the eight stories of this collection, we see a steady reworking of the idea of the world as a fallen Eden. Here, in Mozzi's garden, quasi-allegorical characters seek knowledge of something beyond their shaken realities: they have all lost something and react by escaping, retreating from reality into a world, as Mozzi says, that is "fantastic, mystical, absurd." A purse-snatcher mails his victim's letters back to her, including a letter of his own. An apprentice longs to be a real person, a worker, in an anonymous business where Kafkaesque machines cut nondescript pieces from an unnamed raw material. A man finds, in his endless activity of picking up broken glass in his garden, a metaphor for gathering the pieces of his soul. Intensely imagistic, mystical, mysterious, This Is the Garden is a complicated, unsentimental--yet also heartfelt--exploration of spirituality, love, and the act of creation by a master of the short-story form. Giulio Mozzi has published twenty-six books--as fiction writer, poet, and editor. He is primarily known for his story collections, especially This Is the Garden, which won the Premio Mondello. His work has appeared in numerous American journals and in Best European Ficiton 2010. Elizabeth Harris's translations have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. She is also the translator of Mario Rigoni Stern's Giacomo's Seasons and Antonio Tabucchi's Tristano Is Dying. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Dakota.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. "[A] daringly droll, wholly perturbing book."--New York Times Eleven-year-old Billie lives at a temporary home for children called Children in Reindeer Woods, which she discovers one afternoon, to her surprise, is in the middle of a war zone. When a small group of paratroopers kill everyone who lives there with her,and then turn on each other, Billie is forced to learn to live with the violent, innocent, and troubled Rafael, who decides to abandon the soldier's life and become a farmer, no matter what it takes. A lyrical and continually surprising take on the absurdity of war and the mysteries of childhood, Children in Reindeer Woods is a moving modern fable.…

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "It all blends here unexpectedly: that past and memory with the present and space. [. . .] At times, your skin will crawl with pleasure from reading."--Andrzej Stasiuk Lying in bed in Gotland after a writer's conference, thinking about his compulsive desire to travel--and the uncomfortable tensions this desire creates--the narrator of Salki starts recounting tragic stories of his family's past, detailing their lives, struggles, and fears in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. In these pieces, he investigates various "salkis"--attic rooms where memories and memorabilia are stored--real and metaphorical, investigating old documents to better understand the violence of recent times. Winner of the prestigious Gdynia Literary Award for Essay, Salki is in the tradition of the works of W. G. Sebald and Ryszard Kapuscinski, utilizing techniques of Polish reportage in creating a landscape of memory that is moving and historically powerful. Wojciech Nowicki is a Polish essayist, journalist, critic, photographer, and even writes a culinary column. He is also the co-founder of the Imago Mundi Foundation devoted to promoting photography. Salki is his first book to be translated into English. Jan Pytalski is a graduate of the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw, and has an MA in translation from the University of Rochester.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. "It all blends here unexpectedly: that past and memory with the present and space. [. . .] At times, your skin will crawl with pleasure from reading."--Andrzej Stasiuk Lying in bed in Gotland after a writer's conference, thinking about his compulsive desire to travel--and the uncomfortable tensions this desire creates--the narrator of Salki starts recounting tragic stories of his family's past, detailing their lives, struggles, and fears in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. In these pieces, he investigates various "salkis"--attic rooms where memories and memorabilia are stored--real and metaphorical, investigating old documents to better understand the violence of recent times. Winner of the prestigious Gdynia Literary Award for Essay, Salki is in the tradition of the works of W. G. Sebald and Ryszard Kapuscinski, utilizing techniques of Polish reportage in creating a landscape of memory that is moving and historically powerful. Wojciech Nowicki is a Polish essayist, journalist, critic, photographer, and even writes a culinary column. He is also the co-founder of the Imago Mundi Foundation devoted to promoting photography. Salki is his first book to be translated into English. Jan Pytalski is a graduate of the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw, and has an MA in translation from the University of Rochester.…

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "[A] daringly droll, wholly perturbing book."--New York Times Eleven-year-old Billie lives at a temporary home for children called Children in Reindeer Woods, which she discovers one afternoon, to her surprise, is in the middle of a war zone. When a small group of paratroopers kill everyone who lives there with her,and then turn on each other, Billie is forced to learn to live with the violent, innocent, and troubled Rafael, who decides to abandon the soldier's life and become a farmer, no matter what it takes. A lyrical and continually surprising take on the absurdity of war and the mysteries of childhood, Children in Reindeer Woods is a moving modern fable.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. Joan Orpí (Piera, 1593 - New Barcelona, 1645) is one of the most unknown characters in Spanish history. In this torrential book we are told the odyssey that brought him first to Barcelona, later to Sevilla and finally to America, where he would experience all kinds of outlandish situations. Using historical facts as raw material, and with stellar appearances of characters such as Miguel de Cervantes or the brigand Serrallonga among others, Besora converses with the satirical tradition of works such as Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels or Don Quixote, to paint a fresco of Catalonia in the seventeenth century and the Golden Age of the Spanish empire, creating a novel, fresh, sharp and bursting with exuberant adventures. A triumphant, playful masterpiece brought into a unique style of English thanks to the triumphant creativity of translator Mara Faye Lethem.…

Paperback. Zustand: Good. Joan Orpí (Piera, 1593 - New Barcelona, 1645) is one of the most unknown characters in Spanish history. In this torrential book we are told the odyssey that brought him first to Barcelona, later to Sevilla and finally to America, where he would experience all kinds of outlandish situations. Using historical facts as raw material, and with stellar appearances of characters such as Miguel de Cervantes or the brigand Serrallonga among others, Besora converses with the satirical tradition of works such as Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels or Don Quixote, to paint a fresco of Catalonia in the seventeenth century and the Golden Age of the Spanish empire, creating a novel, fresh, sharp and bursting with exuberant adventures. A triumphant, playful masterpiece brought into a unique style of English thanks to the triumphant creativity of translator Mara Faye Lethem.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. The Brother opens with a mysterious stranger arriving in a small town controlled by a group of men, men who recently cheated the stranger's supposed sister out of her inheritance. Resigned to giving up on her dreams and ambitions, Laila took this swindling in stride, something that Brother won't stand for. Soon after his arrival, fortunes change dramatically, enraging this group of powerful men, motivating them to get their revenge on Brother. Meanwhile, a rat-faced paralegal makes it his mission to discover Brother's true identity. …

Zustand: acceptable. This copy has clearly been enjoyedâ"expect noticeable shelf wear and some minor creases to the cover. Binding is strong, and all pages are legible. May contain previous library markings or stamps.

Paperback. Zustand: Good. Casi, who is almost fourteen years old, has been skipping school and spending her days hidden among the hedges in a local park, listening to music and reading women's magazines. One day, Viejo, a fifty-year-old man, stumbles upon her hiding place, and the two strike up a friendship. He tells her about birds and Nina Simone, buys her soda and chips, and spends almost every day talking with her. Despite their age gap, there's something childlike about Viejo that leads Casi to believe that he's not like the other men she's encountered, the "dangerous ones." But Viejo has a number of secrets in his past--all of which would be of grave concern to Casi's parents or any other adult who witnessed one of their rendezvous. As these secrets rise to the surface, the clock is ticking, the weather is growing cold and the school is untangling Casi's set of lies, setting up a moment where something has to give. With spare, direct prose, Sara Mesa imbues these two outcasts with a great deal of warmth, raising questions about society's prejudices and assumptions, and creating a truly moving novel of an "inappropriate" relationship.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "One of the most prominent names in modern Russian literature."--Publishers Weekly Day after day the Russian asylum-seekers sit across from the interpreter and Peter--the Swiss officers who guard the gates to paradise--and tell of the atrocities they've suffered, or that they've invented, or heard from someone else. These stories of escape, war, and violence intermingle with the interpreter's own reading: a his­tory of an ancient Persian war; letters sent to his son "Nebuchadnezzasaurus," ruler of a distant, imaginary childhood empire; and the diaries of a Russian singer who lived through Russia's wars and revolutions in the early part of the twentieth century, and eventually saw the Soviet Union's dissolution. Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair is an instant classic of Russian literature. It bravely takes on the eternal questions--of truth and fiction, of time and timeless­ness, of love and war, of Death and the Word--and is a movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life and its uncountable joys. Mikhail Shishkin is one of Russia's most prominent and respected contemporary writers. When Maidenhair was published in 2005, it was awarded both the National Bestseller Prize and the Big Book Prize. Marian Schwartz is a prize-winning translator of Russian. The winner of a Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Heldt Translation Prize, Schwartz has translated classic literary works by Nina Berberova, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Bulgakov.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. "Laine looks at the attractive man sitting across from her and can't decide: does she like his forwardness or not? But she's been single for so long, maybe it's worth trying again. Her husband left over ten years ago, and she hasn't really dated since . . . If this one doesn't work out either, then she'll keep living like she has been--but if it does work out? Severīns notices her lingering stare, and his lips once again stretch out at the corners. It must really be his smile, then. She likes it better when he doesn't smile." Eight stories, eight women, an emotional multitude. In her short-story collection, Birthday, Jana Egle distinctly straps the male presence into the back seat and lets the female voice ring free. Not to be taken as "a book for women" or "women's literature," the themes and situations in Birthday present a familiar, yet uneasy, vantage point for any reader, regardless of personal, real-life experience.  A design-firm employee who finds herself dating a potential sociopath, a woman suffering a terrible loss and having to find the strength to ask for help, the navigation of a mental health crisis, the fears of old age, revisitng a past love--Egle explores these universal themes, and more, with a scalding, narrative realism that leaves your skin crawling and your mind begging for more.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "Good readers will find something that can be found only in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what . . . . The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers."--Roberto Bolaño Playful, philosophizing, and gloriously unpredictable, Andrés Neuman's short stories consider love, lechery, history, mortality, family secrets, therapy, Borges, mysterious underwear, translators, and storytelling itself. Here a relationship turns on a line drawn in the sand; an analyst treats a patient who believes he's the real analyst; a discovery in a secondhand shop takes on a cruel significance; a man decides to go to work naked one day. In these small scenes and brief moments Neuman confounds our expectations with dazzling sleight of hand. With a variety of forms and styles, Neuman opens up the possibilities for fiction, calling to mind other greats of Latin American letters, such as Cortázar, Bolaño, and Bioy Casares. Intellectually stimulating and told with a voice that is wry, questioning, sometimes mordantly funny, yet always generously humane, The Things We Don't Do confirms Neuman's place as one of the most dynamic authors writing today. Andrés Neuman was born in Buenos Aires, and grew up and lives in Spain. He was included in Granta's "Young Spanish-language Novelists" issue and is the author of almost twenty works, two of which--Traveler of the Century and Talking to Ourselves-- have been translated into English. Traveler of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, and was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated book award, and shortlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Nick Caistoris a prolific British translator and journalist, best known for his translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He is a past winner of the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. Lorenza Garcia has lived for extended periods in Spain, France, and Iceland. Since 2007, she has translated over a dozen novels and works of non-fiction from French and Spanish.…

Paperback. Zustand: Fair. First Edition. The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. Reprint. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Good. A young girl named Maria is lifted from her beloved Africa and relocated to her native Greece. She struggles with the transition, hating everything about Athens: the food, the air, the school, her classmates and the language. Just as she resigns herself to misery, Anna arrives. Though Anna's refined, Parisian upbringing is the exact opposite of Maria's, the two girls instantly bond over their common foreignness, becoming inseparable in their relationship as each other's best friend, but also as each other's fiercest competition; with boys, talents and politics.…

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "[Labbé] wreaks havoc on narrative rules from the start and keeps doing it."--Bookforum Loquela, Carlos Labbé's fourth novel and second to be translated into English, is a narrative chameleon, a shape-shifting exploration of fiction's possibilities. At a basic level, this book is like a hybrid of Julio Cortázar and Paul Auster: a distorted detective novel, a love story, and a radical statement about narrative art. Behind the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, behind the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from the best summer afternoons, behind the destiny of Neutria--a city that disappears with childhood and returns with desire--and behind a literary move­ment that might be the ultimate vanguard while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novel--the author or the reader. Through an array of voices, overlapping story­lines, a kaleidoscope of literary references, and a delirious prose, Labbé carves out a space for himself among such form-defying Latin American greats as Diamela Eltit, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Jorge Luis Borges. Carlos Labbé, one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists," was born in Chile and is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, one of which, Navidad & Matanza, is available in English from Open Letter. In addition to his writings, he is a musician, and has released three albums. Will Vanderhyden received an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "Scandinavia now has its own Virginia Woolf. Few get as close to the human mind as Klougart"--Mari Nymoen Nilsen, VG The English-language debut from one of Denmark's most exciting, celebrated young writers, One of Us Is Sleeping is a haunting novel about loss in all its forms. As she returns home to visit her mother who is dying of cancer, the narrator recounts a brief, intense love affair, as well as the grief and disillusionment that follow its end. The book's striking imagery and magnificent prose underpin its principal theme: the jarring contrast between the recollection of stability, your parents, your childhood home, your love, and the continual endings that we experience throughout our lives. A true-to-life, deeply poetic novel that works in the same vein as Anne Carson, One of Us Is Sleeping has won Klougart countless accolades and award nominations, including the Readers' Book Award, securing her place as a major new voice in world literature. Josefine Klougart has been hailed as one of Denmark's greatest contemporary writers. She is the first Danish author ever to have two of her first three books nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. She's been compared to a range of authors, including Joan Didion, Anne Carson, and Virginia Woolf. Martin Aitken has translated dozens of books from the Danish, including works by Dorthe Nors, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Peter Høeg, and Kim Leine, among others.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. Translation. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. Translation. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. First American Edition. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. "Dark, scary, and unbelievably funny."--Los Angeles Times "The best short novel I've read this year. . . .Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces."--Barnes & Noble Review Back in Reykjavik after a vacation in London, Emil Halldorsson is waiting for a call from a beautiful girl, Greta, that he met on the plane ride home, and he's just put on a pot of coffee when an unexpected visitor knocks on the door. Peeking through a window, Emil spies an erstwhile friend--Havard Knutsson, his one-time roommate and current resident of a Swedish mental institution--on his doorstep, and he panics, taking refuge under his bed and hoping the frightful nuisance will simply go away. Havard won't be so easily put off, however, and he breaks into Emil's apartment and decides to wait for his return--Emil couldn't have gone far; the pot of coffee is still warming on the stove. While Emil hides under his bed, increasingly unable to show himself with each passing moment, Havard discovers the booze, and he ends up hosting a bizarre party for Emil's friends, and Greta. An alternately dark and hilarious story of cowardice, comeuppance, and assumed identity, the breezy and straightforward style of The Pets belies its narrative depth, and disguises a complexity that grows with every page. Bragi Ólafsson is the author of several books of poetry and short stories, and four novels, including Time Off, which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1999 (as was The Pets), and Party Games, for which Bragi received the DV Cultural Prize in 2004. The Ambassador, available from Open Letter, was a finalist for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize and received the Icelandic Bookseller's Award as best novel of the year. Bragi is one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), and has translated Paul Auster's City of Glass into Icelandic. He is also a former bass player with The Sugarcubes, the internationally successful pop group that featured Bjürk as the lead vocalist. Janice Balfour studied literature and Italian at the University of Iceland. In addition to Bragi Ólafsson, she has translated two collections of short stories by Gydir Elíasson.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. Translation. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Good. "Hats off to one of the most inventive writers of French literature. . . . Hubert Haddad concocts a colorful novel, funny and inventive, as clever as the Fox sisters themselves."--Jean-François Delapré, Saint Christophe Bookstore The Fox Sisters grew up outside of Rochester, NY, in a house with a reputation for being haunted, due to a series of strange "knockings" that plagued its inhabitants. Fed up with the sounds, the youngest of the sisters (aged twelve) challenged their ghost and ended up communicating with a spirit who had been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar. The Fox Sisters became instantly famous for talking to the dead, launching the Spiritualist Movement. After taking Rochester by storm, they moved to New York where they were the most famous mediums of the time, performing séances for hundreds of people--until it all fell apart. Yet, even today, the Fox Sisters are still considered to be the founders of one of the most popular religious movements in recent centuries. Rich in historical detail, Rochester Knockings novelizes the rise and fall of these most infamous of mediums, and sheds a unique light on the impressionability and fragility of nineteenth-century America Hubert Haddad was born in Tunisia, and is the author of dozens of works, including the novels Palestine (winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie), Tango Chinois, and La Condition Magique (winner of the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres). Jennifer Grotz is the editor of Open Letter's poetry series, but is also a poet in her own right (The Needle, Cusp) and translates from French. Additionally, she is a professor of English, creative writing, and translation at the University of Rochester.…

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. Translation. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Zustand: Very Good. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.