A captivating meditation on the power of the sentence by the author of Essayism, a 2018 New Yorker book of the year.In Suppose a Sentence, Brian Dillon, whom John Banville has called “a literary flâneur in the tradition of Baudelaire and Walter...

A seminal text in literary theory available in English for the first timeLegend, saga, myth, riddle, saying, case, memorabile, fairy tale, joke: André Jolles understands each of these nine “simple forms” as the reflection in language of a distinct mode...

“[Smith’s] slim collection of essays captures this peculiar moment with startling clarity. . . . The personal and political intermingle for a powerful indictment of America’s social systems.” —TIME, The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020“While quarantined amid...

Jenny Erpenbeck's highly acclaimed novel Go, Went, Gone was a New York Times notable book and launched one of Germany's most admired writers into the American spotlight. In the New Yorker, James Wood wrote: "When Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize in a few...

This perceptive study of a major cultural movement shows how Southern writers of 1930 t0 1955 tried to come to terms with Southern tradition, and discusses the resulting body of significant literature - fiction, poetry, memoirs, and historical writing.

America’s most celebrated writer returns with a definitive edition of his essential statements on literature, his controversial novels, and the writing life, including including six pieces published here for the first time and many others newly revised...

NPR's Favorite Books of 2019Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—EsquireBook Club Pick for Now Read This,...

"Unusual and engaging . . . A subjective, Whitmanesque meditation on the way we live today . . . What makes this book compelling is not so much where the author goes, but how she reflects on what she sees when she gets there . . . Her wonderfully...

Fiction, far from being the opposite of truth, is wholly bent on finding it out, and writing novels is a way to know the real world as objectively as possible. In Five Fictions in Search of Truth, Myra Jehlen develops this idea through readings of works...

A wise, lyrical memoir about the power of literature to help us read our own lives—and see clearly the people we love most.“Transcendent.”—The Washington Post • “You’d be hard put to find a more moving appreciation of Woolf’s work.”—The Wall Street...

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE AND BOOKPAGEFiguring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR)...

"Wonderful. . . . Spectacular. . . . You feel the pulse of life, what poetry can bring to us if we let it." —The Philadelphia Inquirer"This audacious personal odyssey offers readers a cosmos of possibilities when contemplating what happens once we...

In Stanley Corngold’s view, the themes and strategies of Kafka’s fiction are generated by a tension between his concern for writing and his growing sense of its arbitrary character. Analyzing Kafka’s work in light of "the necessity of form," which is...

Putting History to the Question marks a critical step beyond the orthodoxy of New Historicism. This collection of mutually enriching essays, hitherto scattered through a variety of journals and critical collections, represents a generous range of Michael...

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Named a notable book of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Time, and The Guardian As featured by The Daily Show, NPR, PBS, CBC, Time, VIBE, Entertainment Weekly, Well-Read Black Girl, and...

A bold new vision of the modern English novelThe leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the fiction of the past century, identifying a central new genre: the condition of culture novel. Reading across and against the grain of...

In this delightful memoir, Bhante Walpola Piyananda, a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka, shares his often amusing, often poignant experiences of life in America. Whether he's reasoning with a group of confrontational punks on Venice Beach, bridging the gap...

Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic...