"Letters to Madeleine" collects for the first time in English the remarkable letters and poems sent by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire to his fiancee Madeleine Pages during World War I. Stationed in the trenches of Champagne, this man of letters wh...

Tzvetan Todorov, one of Europe's leading intellectuals, explores the complex relations between art, politics, and ethics in the essays that make up "The Limits of Art". In one essay, "Artists and Dictators", Todorov traces the intimate relationship b...

According to political philosopher Frederic Gros, traditional notions of war and peace are currently being replaced by ideas of intervention and security. But while we may be able to speak of an end to war, this does not imply an end to violence. On...

Modern political theory begins with the rise of the philosophical concept and practice of sovereignty in the sixteenth century. Over the course of the next several centuries, sovereignty was generalized as the form of the modern state – eventually, t...

In "First Light", novelist Ralf Rothmann paints a delicate portrait of a twelve-year-old boy named Julian growing up in a mining community in 1960s Germany. The book covers only a few summer weeks, following Julian's gradual social and sexual awakeni...

French philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes was one of the leading influences on the post-structuralist movement in twentieth-century literary thought, and some of his best-known works, like S-Z, speak directly to the essential and indivi...

If it takes only a few rogue financiers to collapse the economy, can one earnest investment officer save the dollar from collapse? Ken Murai, the protagonist of this fast-paced novel by Michael S. Koyama, is a young officer in the Japanese ministry o...

The Austrian playwright, novelist, and poet Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is acknowledged as among the major writers of our time. The seven stories in this collection capture Bernhard's distinct darkly comic voice and vision – often compared to Kafka a...

Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, a legendary Indian heroine, led her troops against the British in the uprising of 1857, which is now widely described as the first Indian War of Independence. The image of the young warrior queen who died on the battl...

In this play by Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch, a middle-aged behavioral researcher Kurmann is given the opportunity to start his life over at any point he chooses and change his decisions and actions in matters both serious and mundane – H...