A twist on the Irish literary classic Ulysses, told through Nicolas Mahler’s distinctive graphic novel style.
 
Dublin, 16 June 1904: through a day in the life of the advertising agent Leopold Bloom and the sensations of the ordinary, James Joyce created a maximal book from a minimum of matter. Ulysses, the most important novel of modernity, is a defining book of the twentieth century. Joyce’s creation—also spectacularly innovative in form—inspired Nicolas Mahler to attempt a literary retelling that is not a mere illustration or adaption of the novel but an independent and equally as inventive work. Using comics, Mahler transforms the various literary techniques of the original. He assembles his images with humorous and philosophical verve, quoting and rambling along in the spirit of Joyce.
 
With this graphic interpretation of the modern classic, which also constitutes a homage to the golden era of the newspaper comic strip, Ulysses can be newly discovered in a delightfully unexpected form.

A searing manifesto for troubled times in India.

“India is improbable. By any measure of logic or reason, it should not be. Not in this form. And yet it is.”
 
With this provocation, Justice Gautam Patel of the Bombay High Court sketches the exoskeleton of this improbability—the “Constitutional” idea of India. Justice Patel argues that the devolution of power is necessary for the survival of any liberal democracy, maintaining the idea that “the right to choose one’s own government is the right to dissent.” Decrying the portrayal of politics as sport, Patel elucidates the strategies and tactics used by “nimble” governments to enforce a culture of “broad-spectrum illiberalism.” A champion of transparency in the judiciary, Patel argues that the Internet and the judiciary must serve as beacons in this age of precarity. A timely text that comes at a juncture where liberal democracies across the world are facing existential threats, Undermining the Idea of India is a searing manifesto for our troubled times.

A profound novel detailing the brutal legacy of Nazism on four generations of a family in Germany.

Komotau, the Czech Republic, late summer, 1945. Four women—seventy-year-old Johanna, her two daughters Hanna and Maria, and Hanna’s daughter Anna—are ordered by the new Czech authorities to leave their homes and assemble with other Germans at the local train station. They are given thirty minutes—the “wild expulsions” of Sudeten Germans have begun. But where is Anna?
 
Witnessing the revenge lynching of SS and suspected collaborators on her walk home, she arrives in Komotau to find her family gone. The trek takes the older women via Munich, then Dresden and Magdeburg, to an outpost in the far northwest of the Soviet zone where they settle as farm laborers. Once united again, their hope of one day returning to the heimat—homeland—is both a source of strength and a burden, choking attachments to new surroundings and neighbors. This conflict will prove to be the story of their lives, as well as both the joy and ruin of Anna’s son.
 
A tale of four generations told in Reinhard Jirgl’s unique and subversively expressive idiom, The Unfinished plays out between the ruins of Nazi Germany and the rise and fall of communist East Germany, the birth of the Berlin Republic, and the shadow of a new millennium.
 

A collection showcasing the latest poems of the Kurdish-Syrian maestro of Arabic style.

Salim Barakat, the captivating Kurdish-Syrian poet and novelist known for his mastery of Arabic style, is hailed as an enigmatic and intricate figure in contemporary Arabic literature. In The Universe, All at Once, he curates, in collaboration with translator Huda J. Fakhreddine, a selection from his later works, considering them the pinnacle of his poetic career. Drawn from pieces composed between 2021 and 2023, the poems in this collection vary from excerpts of an expansive book-length poem to concise, intense fragments. Fakhreddine expertly renders his writing in English, a courageous and praiseworthy attempt to challenge the barriers of the untranslatable.

This volume not only showcases the prolific author’s poetic evolution but also features a comprehensive interview with Barakat. Conducted by Fakhreddine, the interview delves into Barakat’s early influences, hobbies, talents, reader expectations, and reflections on displacement, childhood, and interpersonal connections. Together, The Universe, All at Once presents the best of Barakat’s latest poetry to his readers and allows invaluable insight into the writing processes and motivations of a visionary modern poet.

Examines the previously unresearched formative years of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski’s career.
 
Polish director Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) was an international leader in experimental theater who became famous in the late 1960s for his revolutionary approach to audience involvement. This volume is devoted to Grotowski’s early work—the performances he directed in the Theatre of 13 Rows (later Laboratory Theatre of 13 Rows) between 1959 and 1964 when the theater was working in the provincial town Opole in south-western Poland. Having decided to work in his own independent theater, Grotowski moved to Opole in September 1956 and developed his ideas with young, inexperienced actors, creating important performances that foreshadowed his renowned masterpieces of the late 1960s.
 
In The Unknown Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski, Dariusz Kosiński and Wanda Świątkowska reconstruct, analyze, and interpret each of the nine performances directed by Grotowski over this period: from Orpheus based onJean Cocteau (1959) to Hamlet Study based on Stanisław Wyspiański (1964). Previously mentioned mainly in the context of the development of Grotowski’s method, these performances dealt with important social, political, and philosophical problems of postwar and post-Holocaust Poland. Grotowski also used these performances to experiment with the forces and problems that he later tried to be discreet about, such as sexuality.
 
Revealing unnoticed and forgotten aspects of Grotowski’s theater, this landmark book presents new materials and perspectives that give fresh life to the study of a genius of twentieth-century theater.

A gay novel in which the rural landscapes of Bengal set the stage for a story that transcends the boundaries of tradition and love.

Mallar, a shy and introspective sixteen-year-old, finds himself drawn to Srijan, his classmate’s enigmatic elder cousin, during a fateful summer in a small-town family home. At first, Mallar’s fantasies take shape in secret sketches of Srijan. But soon, their connection becomes a complex play of mutual desire and dominance, which leads to the forging of a unique pact—a promise never to fall in love with each other.

As their lives take them from the serene landscapes of Bengal to the vibrant beaches of Chennai, the mysterious alleys of Paris, and the buzzing streets of Bangalore, the two men’s unconventional companionship deepens. With each meeting comes a new revelation, a fresh twist to their agreement, and a surprising facet of their identities. Mallar, reviving his childhood passion, embarks on a journey to establish himself as an artist. Collaborating on an art project, Mallar transforms Srijan’s body into a living canvas. But what begins as a creative endeavor quickly becomes a voyage into uncharted depths, as the canvas asks questions, challenges their resolve, and unravels hidden truths, culminating in new beginnings.

Delving into the intricate layers of two men’s lives, their fears, insecurities, hopes, and the mosaic of experiences that shape them, this novel is a testament to the complexities of human connection. One of the first openly gay novels written in Bengali, and the first to be translated into English, Sudipto Pal’s Unlove Story is a groundbreaking addition to the canon of queer literature from around the world.

A patient, genealogical investigation of the dichotomies that are foundational to the Western philosophical tradition.

We are so used to distinguishing between the possible and the real, between essence and existence that we do not realize that these distinctions, which seem so obvious to us, are the result of a long and laborious process that has led to the splitting of being—the “matter” of thought—into two fragments that are both conflicting and intimately intertwined.

This book argues that the ontological-political machine of the West is based on the splitting of this “matter,” without which neither science nor politics would be possible. Without the partition of reality into essence and existence and into possibility and actuality, neither scientific knowledge nor the ability to control human action—which characterizes the historical power of the West—would have been possible.

If we could not suspend the exclusive concentration of our attention on what immediately exists (as animals seem to do), to think and define its essence, Western science and technology would not have experienced the advances that characterize them. And if the dimension of possibility disappeared entirely, neither plans nor projects would be thinkable, and human actions could be neither directed nor controlled. The incomparable power of the West has one of its essential presuppositions in this ontological machine.

A captivating and wide-ranging interpretation of accidental dismounting.
 
In Pascal Quignard’s writing, philology hunts for wild game in a dark forest. The Unsaddled, which features horses as its central figure, is no exception. Taking off from puns, multifarious imagery, and metaphorical meanings—“to be baffled,” “to be thrown”—that the book’s title provides, Quignard focuses on life-changing moments. We meet George Sand (whose father died after being thrown from his horse), Saint Paul, Abelard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, and countless other writers, philosophers, theologians, or kings who fell off their horses—not to forget Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was knocked over by a dog. Being “unsaddled” can also be associated, as Quignard shows in regard to Nietzsche, with an “overturning” of values. Scenes of war, hunting, “fleeing” or sexuality—“When lovers have a horse ride, they gallop in another world”—come before our eyes, each time from those unsettling vantage points that Quignard knows how to find. As ever, he ranges far and wide in his intense quest, taking examples from across human history, from the neolithic age to his own childhood memories of postwar Le Havre in northern France.