Books in the Pushkin Collection series

A new selection of Melville's most electrifying stories, in a beautiful Pushkin Collection edition'Some of the most brilliant stories of his or any other century' Philip Hoare, author of LeviathanHerman Melville produced some of the most singular, enigmatic stories in American literature. From surreally funny tales of office life to claustrophobic accounts of obscure tensions at sea, his darkly modern sensibility produced works of unparalleled narrative inventiveness.A lawyer hires a new copyist, who begins to exhibit a strange, confounding resistance to work. A cynical lightning-rod salesman plies his trade by exploiting fears in stormy weather. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, a cheerful American trader is repeatedly struck by paralyzing unease as figures move in the shadows. These are stories of unsettling ironies and absurd humour, where nothing is as it first appears.

Enchanting stories of women''s inner lives by the rediscovered Belgian author Madeleine BourdouxheThe seven stories in A Nail, A Rose confirm Madeleine Bourdouxhe''s status as an under-appreciated master of the form. Like her critically lauded novels Marie and La Femme de Giles, these stories tunnel into the conflicted hearts of their female characters in fluid, beautiful prose. These are stories of longing and dissatisfaction, of mundane lives ruptured by strange currents of feeling. A woman, wandering alone and heartbroken, is first attacked and then romantically pursued by a stranger, who returns to her house to offer her gifts. A maid wears her mistress''s expensive coat to meet her lover, but finds herself more preoccupied with fantasies of intimacy with her mistress. With piercing insight and candour, Bourdouxhe offers seven unforgettable portraits of the expansive inner lives of ordinary women.

The follow-up to our highly acclaimed edition of Red Cavalry, again translated by the award-winning Boris DralyukOdessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel - a Jewish man, writing in Russian, born in Odessa - uncover its tough underbelly. Gangsters, prostitutes, beggars, smugglers: no one escapes the pungent, sinewy force of Babel's pen.From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik - infamous mob boss, and one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature - to the devastating semi-autobiographical account of a young Jewish boy caught up in a pogrom, this collection of stories is considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian literature.Translated with precision and sensitivity by Boris Dralyuk, whose rendering of the rich Odessan argot is pitch-perfect, Odessa Stories is the first ever stand-alone collection of all the stories Babel set in the city - and includes tales from the original collection as well as later ones.Isaac Babel was a short-story writer, playwright, literary translator and journalist. He joined the Red Army as a correspondent during the Russian civil war. The first major Russian-Jewish writer to write in Russian, he was hugely popular during his lifetime. He was murdered in Stalin's purges in 1940, at the age of 45.

First English publication of a recently rediscovered novella by one of the greatest European writers

An exquisite collection of Japanese poetryThis internationally bestselling book took the world by storm on its publication. Covering the discovery of new love, first heartache and the end of an affair, these poems mix the ancient grace and musicality of the tanka form with a modern insight and wit. With a light, fresh touch and a cool eye, Machi Tawara celebrates the small events in a life fully lived and one that is wonderfully touched by humour and beauty. This book will stay with you through the day, and long after you have finished it.

Old-school publisher meets e-reader: chaos ensues

"The first seven stories in this volume were first published by Pushkin Press in 2015 as The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine"--Title page verso.

Edgar W., teenage dropout, unrequited lover, unrecognized genius - and dead - tells the story of his brief, spectacular life. It is the story of how he rebels against the petty rules of communist East Germany to live in an abandoned summer house, with just a tape recorder and a battered copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther for company. Of his passionate love for the dark-eyed, unattainable kindergarten teacher Charlie. And of how, in a series of calamitous events (involving electricity and a spray paint machine), he meets his untimely end. Absurd, funny and touching, this cult German bestseller, now in a new translation, is both a satire on life in the GDR and a hymn to youthful freedom.

"One doesn't step into anyone's life, not even a dead man's, without having to live it to the end."A man climbs into Ferdinand Sponer's cab, gives the name of a hotel, and before he reaches it has been murdered ... Twice filmed, I Was Jack Mortimer is a darkly captivating and twisting tale of misappropriated identity.

BURNING SECRET is set in an Austrian sanatorium in the 1920's. A lonely twelve-year-old boy is befriended and becomes infatuated by a suave and mysterious baron who heartlessly brushes him aside to turn his seductive attentions to the boy's mother. Stefan Zweig, the author of Beware of Pity and Confusion provides the reader, in this newly available translation, with a study of childhood on the brink of adolescence and a boy's uncontrollable jealousy and feelings of betrayal.

In the autumn of his days, a privy councillor contemplates his past, looking back at the key moments in his life. He remembers sharing a lodging with a professor and his wife and a close friendship is formed. The professor, however harbours a dark secret which changes both men forever.

Portrait of a City in Two Acts: Lviv, Then and NowLviv, Lwow, Lvov, Lemberg. Known by a variety of names, the City of Lions is now in western Ukraine. Situated in different countries during its history, it is a city located along the fault-lines of Europe's history.City of Lions presents two essays, written more than half a century apart - but united by one city.Jozef Wittlin's sensual and lyrical paean to his Lwow, written in exile, is a deep cry of love and pain for his city, most of whose familiar faces have fled or been killed.Philippe Sands' finely honed exploration of what has been lost and what remains interweaves a lawyer's love of evidence with the emotional heft of a descendant of Lviv.With an illuminating preface by Eva Hoffman and stunning new photographs by Diana Matar, City of Lions is a powerful and melancholy evocation of central Europe in the twentieth century, with a special resonance for today's troubled continent.Jozef Wittlin (b.1896) was a major Polish poet, novelist (Salt of the Earth won him a nomination for the Nobel prize), essayist and translator. He studied in Vienna, where he met Joseph Roth and Rainer Maria Rilke, and he served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War. With the outbreak of WWII, Wittlin was evacuated to New York, where he died in 1976.Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at University College London. Lviv is the heart of his latest book, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.Diana Matar is a photographer whose work investigates issues of history, memory and state sponsored violence. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, she has won many prizes and her work has been exhibited in institutions around the world.

Anxious to please his father, Mihaly has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to her own rebellion. On their honeymoon in Italy, Mihaly 'loses' his bride at a provincial station and embarks on a chaotic journey.