Peter Handke, a giant of Austrian literature, has produced decades of fiction, poetry, and drama informed by some of the most tumultuous events in modern history. But even as these events shaped his work, the presence of his mother – a woman whose li...

A searing introduction to Franco Fortini, a Jewish communist and a major figure in postwar Italian intellectual life, "The Dogs of the Sinai" is a book against – against those who love to rush to the aid of the victors, against the widespread and rac...

"New York... I HATE IT... I LOVE IT... I DON'T KNOW..." These are the reflections of Max Frisch (1911-1991) writing from his apartment in the Big Apple near the end of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1946 and continuing until his death at the age...

Among liberal thinkers, there is an optimistic belief that men and women are on a cultural journey toward equality – in the workplace, on the street, and in the home. But observation and evidence both tell us that in many ways this progress has stopp...

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields, and his devoted fans are not just philosophers, but readers of political and legal theory, sociology, and literary criticism as well....

The Roma or Romani people, commonly called gypsies, comprise one of the largest ethnic minorities in the European Union, with significant populations in the Balkan Peninsula as well as Spain, France, Russia, and the Ukraine. Persecution of the Roma d...

By turns astonishing, fierce, and tender, these seven plays by Latina-American dramatist Caridad Svich highlight more than two decades of boundary-breaking and genre-defying dramatic work. Populated by characters struggling to survive, these plays ar...

Since his first collection of poetry appeared in 1953, Philippe Jaccottet has sought to express the ineffable that lies at the heart of our material world in his essential, elemental poetry. As one of Switzerlands's most prominent and prolific men of...

In 1900, Dutch art historians Andre Jolles and Aby Warburg constructed an experimental dialogue in which Jolles supposed he had fallen in love with the figure of a young woman in a painting: "A fantastic figure – shall I call her a servant girl, or r...

In an unnamed African nation, the people are subject to a state of perpetual warfare and to an Orwellian abuse of language that strips from language its meaning and renders life senseless. And in a bare room lit only by moonlight, a young man hides,...