Books in the Swiss Literature series

A cornerstone of Swiss modernism, at last available in English translation from one of the great German translators of our time.

Featuring the work of some of the greatest poets of the twentieth century as well as their contemporary counterparts, this anthology is unique in bringing together a broad selection of Switzerland 's greatest authors in all of the country 's major languages. Featuring Blaise Cendrars, Hugo Ball, Jacques Chessex, Hans Arp, Gerhard Meier, Philippe Jaccottet, Adelheid Duvanel, Arno Camenisch, Giorgio and Giovanni Orelli, Urs Allemann, Claire Genoux, and Robert Walser, among many others including some whose work has never before been available in English translation this overview of Swiss poetry stands as the ideal introduction to an undervalued and idiosyncratic force in international literature, standing at the foundations of many of the most influential literary movements, be they traditional or experimental.

In this eerie, compelling, and playful novel, a young man tormented by his feeble memory meets an elderly man, Robert, endowed with the recall of an elephant. Soon, in exchange for becoming his live-in servant, Robert agrees to allow his young protege to inherit his prodigious memory upon his death. While this might seem a fair if absurd exchange, Robert's demands become progressively more macabre, until the narrator is forced to decide what he is truly willing to sacrifice for the ability to remember. The debut novel of Bernard Comment, acclaimed author and editor, now available in English for the first time, The Shadow of Memory brings a fairy-tale premise into the modern world, where information-and its loss-can be a matter of life and death.

When Quentin's lover announces that she's leaving him for his brother and moving to America, he replies spontaneously that he too is leaving the country: but going where? To Tahas, he improvises: "e;a city whose very name sounded exotic."e; Following through on this impulse, Quentin soon finds a job exactly where he claimed to be going . . . and with his departure from familiar Europe, finds himself aimless in a desert country equal parts dull and dreamlike, enclosed in "e;the Ring"e; to which the wealthy expatriate community is confined by its own xenophobia. Stifled within this community and alienated without, Quentin must decide what sort of life is worth living-safe and aloof, or engaged with the deprivation and even danger of what lies beyond the Ring.