Zoran Zivkovic weaves four mysterious encounters around philosophical questions at the core of human existence. Provocative and original, "Time Gifts" is a meditation on the nature of time and, especially, on the nature of those at its mercy.

At the heart of this collection are those themes that interested and inspired Gyula Illyes throughout his life: cultural values, Hungarian history, and the legacy of suppression and survival. While much of Illyes's work resonates politically, the collection is characterized by a startling intimacy, a closeness to nature, and an unbounded love for the underdog. Bruce Berlind's elegant translation captures Illyes's lyricism and imagery, successfully imparting the wisdom that established the poet as "the conscience of his people".

Josef Erdman arrives in Maribor, Slovenia, on the eve of World War II. Though he claims to be a salesman, it soon becomes apparent that Josef has no purpose in the town--and that a newcomer can expect nothing but distrust from the townspeople. Against this backdrop he witnesses the fiery shimmer of the aurora borealis and imagines the town set aflame--an omen of the coming war.

Daniela Crasnaru is one of the most prominent poets and short story writers in her native Romania. Once a vocal foe of the Ceaucescu regime, Crasnaru was influenced by the political repression of the communist period; but her short stories depart from those of the many Eastern European writers who use literature purely as a forum for political expression. She also focuses her sympathetic eye on the human foibles of ordinary people whose lives are limited by feelings of helplessness and failure.

Crasnaru portrays the lives of people so used to hardship that it never occurs to them to...

The English translation of the prize-winning international bestseller
Winner of the Gunter Grass Prize

Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she and discovers everyone-and everything-has its own story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the tale of the man who...

In self-exile in Canada after the collapse of Yugoslavia and his mother's death, the narrator of Bait is listening to a series of tapes he recorded of his mother years before. As her story is told, he reflects on her life and their relationship, attempting to come to terms with his Jewishness and his own new life in a foreign culture.

Hailed as one of the most important Eastern European writers of the post-Communist era, Pavel Vilikovsky actually began his career in 1965. But the political content of his writing and its straightforward treatment of such taboo topics as bisexuality kept him from publishing the works collected here until after the Velvet Revolution.

An award-winning collection of stories from a promising young Bosnian writer; The protagonists of The Second Book, are connected vertically and horizontally by their struggles. Nietzsche, on the edge of madness, spends a number of mornings contemplating his sweeping ideas and the tiny details of life through hazes left by the gluey fingers of sleep. In The Hot Sun's Golden Circle, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, discoverer of monotheism, embarks on a search for the only true god of Egypt. Bazdulj's charming and funny The Story of Two Brothers examines the lives of William and Henry James from the...

Igor Klekh emerges as a writer from the crossroads of Europe--Western Ukraine--influenced by the great Russian literary tradition as well as the languages and dialects of both East-Central Europe and his native country. A Land the Size of Binoculars collects his breakthrough 1993 novella Kallimakh's Wake, five short pieces, and two more recent novellas.
Throughout, Klekh studies landscapes as intimate as the terrain between fathers and sons and as broad as the wild, mysterious Carpathian Mountains. His work has been compared to that of Borges, Eco, and the magical...

What was the fate of Stanislav Perfetsky--poet, provocateur, and hero of Ukrainian underground culture? Evidence points to suicide. But some whisper murder. Some suggest the grand Eastern European tradition of coerced suicide. It may even be related to the religious cult ceremony he happened upon in Munich . . . or that job as a dancer in a strip club for older women.
Or, then again, it may not.
"Perverzion" constructs Perfetsky's final days using a mishmash of relics, from official documents to recorded interviews to scraps of paper. Perfetsky, the personification of the Ukrainian...