Books published by Dedalus Ltd

The identity of Venice, Queen of the Adriatic, is inseparable from the waters of the lagoon by which she is surrounded. Isabella Panfido takes us on an exploration of those waters that since time immemorial have been Venice's refuge and defence, visiting some of its many islands (the names of a few - Fisolo, Sant'Arian, Lio Piccolo, San Secondo - will be unknown even to the most assiduous visitors to the city), and introducing us to their elusive magic and their well-kept secrets. We learn of haunting illusions created by the peculiar geography of the lagoon under certain climatic conditions; of the devastating plague of 1630 that led to the loss of 47,000 Venetian lives over a period of sixteen months; of the destruction by a bitter north wind of baskets full of carefully harvested soft-shelled crabs and their seemingly miraculous rebirth and metamorphosis from one delicacy into another; of thwarted yearnings and ambitions, of jealous rivalries and revenge, of the terrible price of vanity - and much, much more. An expert guide and consummate storyteller, the author draws on a deep and extensive knowledge of her native city past and present, and on her own personal experiences, weaving together myth and legend, imagination and historical fact, to capture the mystique of the phenomenon that is Venice. Venice Noir is the winner of two literary prizes: the Latisana per il Nord-Est Prize and the Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize.

In Caterina, Claudia Durastanti presents us with a Cleopatra for our times - no exotic queen courted by two lovers with the fate of an empire in their hands but a young would-be ballet dancer who now works in as a cleaner in a down-at-heel hotel. This is the Rome of the underclass, of illegal immigrants, gypsies and sex shops where life is a struggle for dysfunctional families and nothing comes easy, except disappointment. Every Thursday Caterina visits her boyfriend Aurelio in Rebibbia prison in Rome, where, following a mysterious tip-off to the police, he is being held in custody under suspicion of pimping the strippers in the nightclub he was running. What would Aurelio say if he knew that she went straight from the prison to meet the policeman who arrested him, and who is now her lover? Caterina's life is difficult and her environment challenging but she is a survivor and takes everything life throws at her without complaint. Caterina is very much a heroine for our times.

Margherita Giacobino's book is a fictionalised biography/autobiography of Patricia Highsmith, taking the form of diary entries supposedly written by her, interspersed with a third-person narrative. It focuses on her psychological and emotional life, with the emphasis on feelings, relationships and aspirations rather than facts, dates and events. A lesbian in an era when to be homosexual was to be reviled and discriminated against, and made to feel guilty and ashamed, Patricia Highsmith struggled with her sexual identity in this social context, and the book fruitfully explores how this might have contributed to her creative output. The title is a reference to Patricia Highsmith's second novel The Price of Salt, a lesbian romance originally published under a pseudonym after it was rejected by the publisher of her first novel. It was not until 1990 that Patricia Highsmith agreed to its reissue under her own name, with the new title Carol.

A story from one of Germany's most popular children's authors. Carlo is determined to see his father, who lives back in Palermo, and therefore sets out without any money to make his way there.

A funny and touching exploration of freedom, friendship and finding yourself. Mo acknowledges her 'inner voice' and sets to work on her memoirs, not letting her bovine nature stop her. Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

Ohl's homage to nineteenth century English fiction features a Dickensian cast of characters (including Dickens himself), in its depiction of the fallout from a mysterious discovery.

Rural ideals clash with big city ambition in this novel of female empowerment, which is also the first novel by a female author to be published in Cape Verde. Salustio has been awarded the PEN Galicia for lifetime achievement.

Some of Grabinski's best stories, including a watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks, and a phantom train that always turns up unannounced.

The first English translation of Huysmans' seminal art book, analysing work by a range of key figures including Paul Gauguin, Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet.

Equal parts crime novel and state-of-the-nation exploration of modern Greece, George Zakiris takes on an offer of work which increasingly challenges him with choices between poverty and collusion in crime.

This is the first English translation of The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui, a picaresque novel in which the hero, a magical little boy, goes in search not of his fortune but of knowledge, growing both wiser and possibly sadder in the process. 'In his dedication, Ferlosio describes this exquisite fantasy novel, first published in 1952 and now beautifully translated into English as a 'story full of true lies.' Much honored in his native Spain, Ferlosio is a fabulist comparable to Jorge Borges and Italo Calvino, as well as Joan Miro and Salvador Dali. Cervantes comes to mind. Ferlosio's prose is effortlessly evocative. A chair puts down roots and sprouts 'a few green branches and some cherries, ' while a paint-absorbing tree becomes a 'marvelous botanical harlequin.' Later, Alfanhui sets off on a tour of Castile, meeting his aged grandmother 'who incubated chicks in her lap and had a vine trellis of muscatel grapes and who never died.' This is a haunting adult reverie on life and beauty and as such will appeal to discriminating readers.' Starred review in Publisher's Weekly

First published on the eve of the First World War, Keyserling's masterpiece offers a vivid portrait of a society on the verge of dissolution. A group of German aristocrats gathers at a seaside village on the Baltic Sea for a summer holiday in the early years of the twentieth century. The characters represent a cross-section of the upper classes of imperial Germany: a philandering baron, his jealous wife, a gallant cavalry officer, the elderly widow of a general, a cynical government official, a lady's companion. Their lives, even on holiday, are regulated by rigid protocol and archaic codes of honour. But their quiet, disciplined world is thrown into disarray by the unexpected presence of Doralice, a young countess who has rebelled against social constraints by escaping from an arranged marriage and running away with a bourgeois artist.

The Continuation is Grimmelshausen's 'pilgrim's progress', the concluding chapter in one of the greatest and most acclaimed German novels. It combines fantastic episodes with a realistic narrative style. At the end of his original adventures his hero withdraws from the world to live as a hermit in the Black Forest. Now, after a vivid dream of the Devil and all his minions at work, he decides to become a pilgrim and visit the holy places, making his way, with various encounters, across Switzerland to Italy, where he takes passage on a ship to Egypt. Outside Cairo he is captured by Arab robbers who take him to the Red Sea, exhibiting him as a wild man from the desert. Rescued by European merchants, he embarks on a ship to return home via the Cape of Good Hope, but the ship is wrecked and, 50 years before Robinson Crusoe, he is marooned on a desert island.

On the face of things, Mastro Don Gesualdo is a success. Born a peasant but a man' with an eye for everything going', he becomes one of the richest men in Sicily, marrying an aristocrat with his daughter destined, in time, to wed a duke. But Gesualdo falls foul of the rigid class structure of mid-19th century Sicily. His title Mastro Don, 'Worker Gentleman', is ironic in itself. Peasants and gentry alike resent his extraordinary success. And when the pattern of society is threatened by revolt, Gesualdo is the rebels' first target.

The first novel from Mauritania to be translated into English, in which Rayhana leaves her Bedouin tribe with metal-mining outsiders, with complications ensuing.

A broad selection of Estonian women's writing on a timeline of influence and context spanning from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Elisabeth Aspe, Betti Alver and Maarja Kangro all feature.

Andrew Crumey's novels are renowned for their unique blend of science, history, philosophy and humour. Now he brings the same insight and originality to this story cycle whose title offers an ironic twist on the ancient doctrine of connectedness, the great chain of being. Here we find a blind man contemplating the light of an atom bomb, a musician disturbed by a conspiracy of radio waves, a visitor to Moscow caught up in a comic case of mistaken identity, a woman on a Greek island trying to become a different person. We range across time, from the Renaissance to a globally-warmed future, across light-years in search of hallucinogenic space-plankton, and into magical worlds of talking insects and bottled fire. Fans of Crumey's acclaimed novels will occasionally spot hints of themes and figures that have recurred throughout his fiction; readers new to his work will delight in finding subtle links within the pieces. Are they all part of some larger untold story? We have nothing to lose but the chains of our imagination: what lies beyond is a great change of being.

Toomas Nipernaadi is one of the more peculiar works in the Estonian literary canon, and its eponymous male protagonist is without doubt one of the most exciting characters in the language. First of all he seems merely to be a man who travels from place to place charming people and telling stories, only to forget it all in the blink of an eye. But perhaps, more than anybody, it is precisely he who remembers. Perhaps all the hearts he touches will remain dear to him. The idea of Toomas Nipernaadi is said to have come to Gailit when he heard a man's echoing footsteps in a Berlin theatre, and those who wish to will hear this sound in the text of his novel. In many ways the protagonist can be seen as the writer's alter ego. Those close to Gailit knew that beneath his self-confidence and brio, a tender and melancholy soul was hiding, which the reader will no doubt be able to recognise in Toomas Nipernaadi. Since it was first published in 1928, the book has conquered one heart after another, and it will charm many coming generations. Besides other things, it captures the dream-like summer of Estonia: brief yet eternally recurring.

This anthology illustrates the evolution of Russian women's writing over the 20th century. Women produced literary texts as early as the Middle Ages, but it was only in the 1900s that women authors finally made a notable breakthrough on the Russian literary scene. Despite a brilliant start further development of women's writing in Russia was crudely interrupted by Soviet censorship and only resumed after the downfall of the USSR. Whereas critics unanimously recognise the greatness of such literary stars as Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva, opinions differ about other celebrities of the time such as Teffi and Lydia Ginzburg who reached wide readerships only in the 1990s, when most of the formerly banned books were published. Mid-century, women were almost invisible in Russian literature, but they were still writing, including such world-famous authors as Ludmila Ulitskaya, Galina Scherbakova, and Svetlana Alexiyevich. In the latter decades women were increasingly dominating publishing programmes and are represented here by Olga Slavnikova, Ludmila Ulitskaya, Irina Muravyova, and Margarita Khemlin.

Mike Mitchell has revised his translation and a new introduction has been added. 'A superbly atmospheric story set in the old Prague ghetto featuring the Golem, a kind of rabbinical Frankenstein's monster, which manifests every 33 years in a room without a door. Stranger still, it seems to have the same face as the narrator. Made into a film in 1920, this extraordinary book combines the uncanny psychology of doppelganger stories with expressionism and more than a little melodrama... Meyrink's old Prague -- like Dickens's London -- is one of the great creation of city writing, an eerie, claustrophobic and fantastical underworld where anything can happen.' Phil Baker in The Sunday Times

The Black Cauldron is not a war novel as such, but a work of magic realism which traces a series of boisterous, tragi-comic events in one of the more unusual western European societies. Spanning the tragedy of war, the clash of sectarian interests, the interplay of religion and sex, The Black Cauldron develops into a presentation in mythical form of the conflict between life and death, good and evil.

New Jerusalem Monastery, seventeenth-century Moscow. Patriarch Nikon has instructed an itinerant French dramatist to stage the New Testament and hasten the Second Coming. But this will be a strange form of theatre. The actors are untrained, illiterate Russian peasants, and nobody is allowed to play Christ. They are persecuted, arrested, displaced, and ultimately replaced by their own children. Yet the rehearsals continue... A stunning reflection on art, history, religion and national identity, Rehearsals is the seminal work in the unique oeuvre of Vladimir Sharov, Russian Booker Prize winner (2014) and author of Before & During (Read Russia award for best translation, 2015).

The murder of his Professor by a postgraduate Physics student during a lecture at Crete University in November 1990 shocked Greece. Many found Yatromanolakis' novel based on the event equally shocking, as he seemed to have more sympathy for the murderer than the victim and transposed his crime to the world of myth. A Report of a Murder has the same teasing style as Tristram Shandy as we enter the author's labyrinth and share in the novel's sense of tragic inevitability and eternal recurrence.