Books published by Dalkey Archive Press

American Odysseys is an anthology of twenty-two novelists, poets, and short-story writers drawn from the shortlist for the 2011 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature. Including Ethiopian-born Dinaw Mengestu, the recipient of the Prize; Yugoslavian-born Téa Obreht, the youngest author to receive the Orange Prize in Fiction; and Chinese-born Yiyun Li, a MacArthur Genius grantee, what these authors all have in common¿and share with US Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who has contributed a foreword¿is that they are immigrants to the United States, now excelling in their fields and dictating the terms by which future American writing will be judged by the world. Running the gamut from desperate realism to whimsical fantasy¿from Miho Nonakäs poetry, inspired by fourteenth-century Noh theater, to Ismet Prcic¿s wrenching stories set in the aftermath of the Bosnian war¿American Odysseys is proof, if any be needed, that the heterogeneity of American society is its greatest asset.

What happens when a writer throws herself into the service of one of the richest businessmen in the world? Will all the luxuries and corruption of the business world turn her into a complacent drone?

Considered by many to be Elkin's magnum opus, George Mills is, an ambitious, digressive and endlessly entertaining account of the 1,000 year history of the George Millses. From toiling as a stable boy during the crusades to working as a furniture mover, there has always been a George Mills whose lot in life is to serve important personages. But the latest in the line of true blue-collar workers may also be the last, as he obsesses about his family's history and decides to break the cycle of doomed George Millses. An inventive, unique family saga, George Mills is Elkin at his most manic, most comic and most poignant. First published by Random House (1982), most recent paperback by Avon (1996).

Paradoxes of Peace continues the meditation of Mosley's Time at War, at the end of which he wrote that humans find themselves at home in war because they feel they know what they have to do, whereas in peace they have to discover this. But what should inform them--custom? need? duty? ambition? desire? Forces pull in different directions--fidelity versus adventurousness, probity versus fun. During the war, Mosley found himself having to combine fondness for his father, Oswald Mosley, with the need to speak out against his post-war politics. In times of peace, his love for his wife and children, too, seemed riddled with paradoxes. He sought answers in Christianity, but came to see organized religion as primarily a social institution. How does caring not become a trap?

Set in the aftermath of the ¿Carnation Revolution¿ of April 25, 1974, Antonio Lobo Antunes¿s Warning to the Crocodiles is a fragmented narrative of the violent tensions resulting from major political changes in Portugal. Told through the memories of four women who spend their days fashioning homemade explosives and participating in the kidnap and torture of communists, the novel details the clandestine activities of an extreme right-wing Salazarist faction resisting the country¿s new embrace of democracy.Warning to the Crocodiles (Exortação aos Crocodilos) has won:- Best Novel by the Portuguese Writers Association (Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela da Associação Portuguesa de Escritores) (1999)- The D. Dinis Prize of the Casa de Mateus Foundation (Prémio D. Dinis da Fundação Casa de Mateus) (1999)- The Austrian State Literature Prize (Prémio de Literatura Europeia do Estado Austríaco) (2000)

Anderson's debut novel introduces readers to a writer of lucid, hallucinatory prose worthy of comparison with Roberto Bolano, Cormac McCarthy, and Jose Saramago

When Samuel Beckett and the Dutch painter Bram Van Velde met in Paris in the 1930s, both were living in abject poverty, and neither could have anticipated that on the other side of World War II and the brutal occupation of France by the Nazis they would each go on to be luminaries in their respective mediums: Beckett winning the Nobel Prize and becoming a bulwark of contemporary Western literature, and Van Velde holding exhibitions all over the world. Thirty years later, a younger author at the start of his career is introduced into the company of these two great pessimists neither of whom make cooperative interview subjects, and each of whom represents, in his own way, a radical rejection of the common languages of his art.Itself a mixture of idolatry, deft characterization, and critical insight, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram Van Velde is both an entertaining and insightful contribution to our understanding of the lives and thoughts of two masters.

Written when he was only twenty-five, before embarking on the masterpieces that would make him an integral figure in twentieth-century letters, Psalm 44 shows Kis at his most lyrical and unguarded, demonstrating that even in "e;the place of dragons . . . covered with the shadow of death,"e; there can still be poetry. Featuring characters based on actual inmates and warders-including the abominable Dr. Mengele-Psalm 44 is a baring of many of the themes, patterns, and preoccupations Kis would return to in future, albeit never with the same starkness or immediacy.

"No one is better than William H. Gass at communicating the sublime and rapturous excitement of reading." Washington Post

Martereau is narrated by a tubercular young man driven by a compulsion to discover what lies behind faades, especially in relation to the adults around him. He's particularly interested in Martereau, his uncle's devoted friend and business associate. All in all, Martereau seems like a trustworthy, benign, self-sufficient man, but under the narrator's intense scrutiny--and Martereau's suspect behavior concerning a shady real-estate deal--his motives seem much more complex and seedy. In a subtle, skillful way, Nathalie Sarraute explores the difference between those who are wealthy and those who pretend to be so, and the manipulative way in which some people get ahead in the world.

Just as Ezra Pound wrote a "Homage to Sextus Propertius" to pay tribute to an important influence, Julian Rios offers in his new novel a "Homage to Ezra Pound" (as the original Spanish edition is subtitled). On November 1, 1972, news of Pound's death in Venice reaches three Spanish bohemians in London, passionate admirers of "il miglior fabbro" ("the better craftsman", as Eliot called him), who decide to honor Pound's memory by visiting various sites in London associated with him. Filled with allusions to Pound's life and works and written in a style similar to Finnegans Wake, Rios's word-mad novel features the same characters from his first novel, Larva: the poet Milalias, his girlfriend Babelle, and their mentor X. Reis, each of whom writes part of the novel: Milalias writes the Joycean main text, Reis (as Herr Narrator) adds commentary on facing pages, and Babelle furnishes maps and photos. Together, they compile the "Parting Shots" at the end, dazzling short stories that expand upon incidents in the main text. Sound confusing? No more so than the Cantos, and Rios is much funnier.

This book reflects the crude reality of rural Spain in Franco's time. It is full of human power and rich in social insight. Cela writes with great detail, but still maintains simplicity.

Graal Flibuste follows the progress of its narrator and his impudent coachman, Brindon, through a fantastical land peopled by strange creatures and stranger potentates, and filled with tall tales, mysteries, crimes, dilemmas, and deities ... not least among whom is the terrible god Graal Flibuste himself.

"The best comic writer I can think of." S.J. Perelman

Dust tells the story of a librarian terrified by the decay of the world around him. With the help of his wife, the librarian wages a futile war against the dust that coats his surroundings until one day Adrian Bravi, or a character very much like the author, arrives on the scene attesting to the very same fears of decay and decline.

La Belle Roumaine tells the story of Ana, a beautiful and bewitching Romanian woman. Shuttling between the capital cities of Europe. The novel follows Ana as she seduces cafe owners, philosophers, and wandering emigrants alike, each receiving a different version of her life story. To some, she's a former nurse, to others, a former spy.

Selected Poems offers a selection of the award-winning poetess Maja Vidmar, culled from a several volumes: Body Distances (1984), Ways of Binding (1988), At the Base (1998) and Presence (2005), which was awarded the Jenko Prize. She is also the winner of the prestigious Preseren Foundation Award, and her work has appeared internationall

In The Circus of Trust, Mark Tardi implicates us all in a pastoral of detritus where "the same indifferent sun" unflinchingly tracks devastation as part of the most routine actions.