Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters" has been called his "most enjoyable novel" by the New York Review of Books. It's a wild satire that takes place almost entirely in front of Tintoretto's "White-Bearded Man", on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,...

"'Blue jewellery" is private property. Not to be seen. Not to be talked about. It is worn like a bracelet around the wrists, on ribs, legs, arms. Blue jewellery is another name for the marks left on women's bodies, inflicted by the men around them....

As a boy growing up in rural Italy in the 1930s, Dam?n is experiencing the first stirrings of adolescence when he accidentally sees his mother having sex with the local Fascist commandant. His pain, anger, and confusion are uncomfortably intertwined...

Breviaries, books of standard religious readings for particular denominations, are a familiar genre with a long pedigree. But you've definitely never seen a breviary like this one. "The Sex of the Angels" is a playful, often ironic take on the brevia...

In contemporary Norwegian fiction Tomas Espedal's work stands out as uniquely personal; it can be difficult to separate the fiction from Espedal's own experiences. In that vein, his novel "Against Art" is not just the story of a boy growing up to be...

This lyrical novel tells the story of a young man living in Egypt in the 1990s, a time of great turmoil. We see student riots at Cairo University, radical politics, and the first steps towards the making of a writer. But his story is not told in isol...

Christa Wolf tried for years to find a way to write about her childhood in Nazi Germany. In her 1976 book "Patterns of Childhood", she explained why it was so difficult: "Gradually, over a period of months, the dilemma has emerged: to remain speechle...

This lyrical novel, set in the surroundings of the Palestinian village of Zakariyya, weaves a narrative rich in sensory detail yet troubled by the porousness of memory. It tells the story of the relationship between two figures of deep mythical reson...

After years on the job, police detective Jakob Franck has retired. Finally, the dead – with all their mysteries – will no longer have any claim on him. Or so he thinks. On a cold autumn afternoon, a case he thought he'd long put behind him returns t...

Toby Litt is one of that rare breed of fiction writers who never writes the same book twice: every time out, he takes an unexpected new tack – and his readers happily follow. ?Told in the form of the pithy, even lyrical advice a young soldier leaves...