Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. A few months back we shared the wonderful news that poet Michael Palmer has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an award for general...
Read More »If there's one novel that lends itself to cinematic exploration, it's W. G. Sebald's beloved masterpiece The Rings of Saturn. It's impossible not to crave to see what the narrator sees on his walking tour of the Eastern English Coast, and though the curious archive of photographs...
Read More and Watch the Video»I first came across Tony Fitzpatrick's wonderful collage art when this post came up in google alert for Roberto Bolaño. Explaining his "Bird for the Daughters of Juarez" (below), he writes: The underlying thematic device, for me, seems to be the world’s rapid...
Read More »Like all publishers, I believe, we have a library containing copies of every book we've ever published. And since it contains first editions of Lustig-designed titles by Ezra Pound, Tennessee Williams, Nabokov, and on an on, we like to show it off to visitors. All of that handling, however,...
Read More »Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. This week's poet is Xi Chuan, whom translator Lucas Klein, in his introduction to Notes on the Mosquito, describes thusly: "Xi Chuan (pronounced...
Read More »Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. Wow, it's been a while since I posted one of these. Too long. Sorry about that. As you likely know, April is National Poetry Month. Not coincendtally,...
Read More »Christine Brooke-Rose, the prominent English critic and experimental writer, died on March 21 at the age of 89. Brooke-Rose was born in Switzerland and educated at Somerville College in Oxford and University College in London. She taught English literature at the University of Paris from 1968...
Read More »Truth is we've been dying to find a reason to talk about the newly relaunched version of The Chicagoan, a beautifully produced and brilliantly edited magazine that published its first issue back in early March. It's gotten attention from far and wide, including The Chicago Tribune, Time...
Read More »On March 29, Jochen Greven, widely considered the world's leading Robert Walser scholar, passed away. Susan Bernofsky, who has translated several of Walser's books into English, has posted a touching, personal note of rememberence for Greven on her blog, Translationista. Posted below is...
Read More »Presented with a minimum of commentary, Anne Carson's Antigonick. We posted a preview back in January, but now have in our possession the only pair of finished copies in the Western Hemisphere (the remainder are being shipped, via freighter, from the speciality printer in China and will...
Read More »On Sunday morning we learned that Italian author Antonio Tabucchi passed away after a battle with cancer. Born in Pisa in 1943 to a horse trader, Tabucchi studied literature and philosophy and before returning to Italy to begin his own writing career. Over the years he won several...
Read More »Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. Now that Valentine's Day has passed, and now that it's turned cold and rainy, at least here in New York, why not hunker down with some poetry by Dylan...
Read More »One of the great unexpected pleasures of redesigning our website came as we uploaded author photos. Many of them are incomparably wonderful, and in what I hope will be a semi-regular feature on the blog, we'll point them out to you. Nicanor Parra. Theoretical physicist, cosmologist,...
Read More »A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of talking to hundreds of booksellers — in groups of about eight at a time — about Anne Carson's forthcoming book, Antigonick. Of course I mentioned her previous book, Nox, and of course I ended up saying "beautiful book-in-a-box"...
Read More »Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. This week, we present Forrest Gander. Following in the footsteps of many New Directions poets, Forrest is a Renaissance man with degrees in geology and...
Read More »We aren't typically keen on bringing your attention to books published by other publishers, but we do make certain exceptions, and this certainly qualifies as one. If you ever turned over a New Directions book — after admiring the cover — to look for the design credit, then...
Read More »It's official: Anne Carson's new book, a new translation of Sophokles' Antigone called Antigonick (the title makes sense in the context of the new translation, I swear) is off at the printer, and should be landing on our fair shores sometime in late April. Similar to Nox, this is a...
Read More »Last week, editor Barbara Epler and I were in New Orleans, where we were meeting (and wining and dining) booksellers at the American Booksellers Association's Winter Institute — sort of like Book Expo America minus all the glitz and carnival barking. While we were there, we took some...
Read More »In the January 1 issue of the New York Times Magazine, critic at large Sam Anderson opens his books and shares some marginal scribblings. Below is the printed version, and over on their website is a fancy multi-media version wherein Anderson talks about each note, including a...
Read More »Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. Lawrence Ferlinghetti: poet, novelist, publisher, bookseller, social activist, and much more. An enduring American icon at a time when achieving such status...
Read More »This will be the most heartwarming thing you see all day.
Read More and Watch the Video»Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. This week, in honor of his formally receiving his Nobel Prize in Literature, we're sharing a singularly beautiful poem by Tomas Transtrômer....
Read More »One of the great unexpected pleasures of redesigning our website came as we uploaded author photos. Many of them are incomparably wonderful, and in what I hope will be a semi-regular feature on the blog, we'll point them out to you. With this installment of Awesome Author Photos, we...
Read More »In advance of this Sunday's 40th anniversary marathon reading of Frederic Tuten's avant-garde novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (more information about the event can be found here), we thought it might make sense to say a few words about the unique novel. First,...
Read More »Due to popular demand, and as a concession to common sense, we've decided to put poems here on our website — one poet per week. As we are wont to do, we begin the Poet of the Week series with a post that bends the rules a bit. Rather than showcasing poetry by the...
Read More »One of the great unexpected pleasures of redesigning our website came as we uploaded author photos. Many of them are incomparably wonderful, and in what I hope will be a semi-regular feature on the blog, we'll point them out to you. Today we present William Gerhardie, an Anglo-Russian...
Read More »This is the Richard Hell everyone knows. Frontman for the seminal punk band Television (first known as The Neon Boys) and later for The Voidoids. He became a legend in the punk scene. Malcolm McLaren says...
Read More »We can keep quiet on this odd bit of theater news no longer. Multi-talented actor James Franco will make a one-time appearance in a commissioned play entitled Three Artists in Search of Tennessee Williams. Being staged this Sunday, November 13 at noon, the play is part of the Performa...
Read More »Last night I put on my favorite suit and made the trek to midtown to the Permanent Cuban Mission to the United Nations — housed in a spacious, if slightly rundown, building on Lexington Avenue a few blocks from the U.N. headquarters — to celebrate the publication of the new book Who...
Read More »As you might have heard, New Directions has been publishing books since 1936, seventy-five years. And for the last forty or so years, we've been in the same 19th floor space on 14th Street in Chelsea, which means that a lot our history is still here, happily reminding us of the past. Our...
Read More »The night of Thursday, October 27 was rainy and chilly and the heat in the Great Hall at Cooper Union was basically nonexistant, but that didn't stop several hundred people from showing up to see our all-star roster of New Directions fans read from and discuss their favorite books in honor of...
Read More »Eliot Weinberger and Lydia Davis read last night to a crowded audience in a dimly-lit KGB Bar for its "True Story Non-Fiction" series. Weinberger and Davis, having known eachother since highschool, exchanged humorous comments about who was the "cooler kid" back in the day...
Read More and Watch the Video»Back on September 17, Community Bookstore in Brooklyn celebrated their 40th anniversary with a reading at the Old First Reformed Church. I'm told 900 people were in attendance, and judging by the pictures here, I'm inclined to believe them. I was there, sitting near a column, my view of...
Read More »As discussed in her interview with Bookforum's Morten Høi Jensen, Helen DeWitt cites Mel Brooks's 1968 film The Producers as inspiration for her second novel Lightning Rods. She says: It had been 18 months since my first agent told me she could get an advance so I could...
Read More and Watch the Video»To say that it's been a bit crazy around here since Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature last Thursday is a vast understatement. We were giddy, of course. Beside ourselves. There's nothing quite like the Nobel Prize to remind you — to reassure...
Read More »In terms of cultural popularity, the most enduring songs on Combat Rock — The Clash’s fifth studio album — are, in no particular order, “Rock the Casbah”, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, and “Know Your Rights”. The best song on the album,...
Read More and Watch the Video»There are lots of adages about change. It’s inevitable. It’s good. According to Heraclitus, it’s the only thing that endures. And according to Sam Cooke, it’s gonna come. So here we are, with a beautiful new website and a glossy new blog that we’ve decided to call...
Read More »As the publication date for the four new translations approaches, Moser discusses the Brazilian master. Listen here.
And sets it against the very real Argentine backdrop. Read it here.
Writing on the Poetry Society of America blog, Klein talks about the process of translating Xi Chuan, walking readers through an example.
An intimate look at his writing — and tastes — in an with Guernica.
May Books and Events from New Directions
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New Directions intern, Laura Brown, chats with award-winning translator, Susan Bernofsky, who talks about her favorite foreign authors and gives tips to aspiring translators. Read their full conversation here.
They say that Roberto Bolano is still "haunting" Latin American Literature, most recently in The Secret of Evil. Read their full review here.
With an eye on the context of the Arab Spring. Read their full review here.
This thoughtful piece, as her editor joked, is "nearly as long as one of his novels." You can read it all here.
Both Never Any End to Paris, by Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas, and Kornél Esti, by Hungarian author Dezső Kosztolányi, are on the BTBA shortlist. You can read the full write-up here.
Featuring fascinating discussions of the books we've translated. Read their thoughts on Ghosts here.
And discovers a "willful blurring of literary boundaries." Read the article here.
An article about parents encouraing their precocious children to publish their writing has sparked curious discussion in the "Letters" section, including an analogy to French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Read the banter here.
In advance of the book's release, they've excerpted "The Scholars of Sodom" — a story about Naipaul in Buenos Aires.
BTBA judge Monica Carter shares why she thinks Enrique Vila-Matas's novel is the top choice. Read it on the Three Percent blog here.
In the magazine's wonderfully curated "Readings" section this month is a story of the forthcoming collection called "I Can't Read". Enjoy.
April News from New Directions
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Back in December, n + 1 hosted an event at Fordham, with Keith Gessen moderating and Helen DeWitt participating. Now they have video evidence.
The perfect review for Aira fans and newcomers alike. Read the full review here.
Reviewer Jacob Silverman parallels the book to the eponymous dance, saying that it is "ever moving forward and back, orchestrated by a knowing, even otherwordly figure." Read the full review here.
News comes today that Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods is on The Believer's shortlist for its annual Book Award for Fiction. You can read the announcement here, and watch a dramatic reading from the book here.
But not everything is roses. The New York Times Book Review compares translation of Thomas Tranströmer's poetry, before and after his win. Read it all here.
Editor of Pound's New Selected Poems & Translations, Sieburth talks about his unusual education, his love for Rimbaud, and — of course — Ezra Pound. Read the interview here.
And decides that, as we intended, it composes a "fragmented biography." Read their review full here.
The Washington Post shares glimpses of each. Read the full list of finalists here.
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award, Craig Teicher reviews Gander's poetry collection: Core Samples from the World.
The Harvard Crimson takes a closer look at Cesar Aira's Varamo.
With Barbara Epler, Benjamin Moser, David Randall, and host Scott Esposito. Read it all here.
Previewing the National Book Critics Circle finalists for poetry, a recommendation for Forrest Gander's Core Samples from the World. Read their full recommendation here.
The Millions gives a close reading of Satantango's "vast black river of type." Read the full review here.
And the "the absurdities that make reading Aira addictive. Read the full review here.
... and praises Aira's "attention to the raw strangeness of life's ordinary details." Read the full article here.
March News from New Directions
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Balancing between satire and the plausible, The Rumpus claims "DeWitt's true genius lies in the skewered logic she concocts" when justifying her character's preposterious business plan. Details here.
According to Ehrenreich, "he word lyrical is key" to understanding Bolaño. Read the full article here.
Oh, and a "must read." Read their full review here.
... citing his moxie to create fake quotes from Kate Moss and Vladimir Nabokov in the same breath. Fiction Advocate explains how he gets away with it in The Hall of the Singing Caryatids.
February News from New Directions
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And praises the Egyptian author as "a keen observer of codes." Read the complete review here.
With the backdrop of the Arab Spring, Bookforum explores the writer's role and legacy. Read it all here.
"DeWitt," they claim, "is one of the sharpest and most unforgiving writers at work today." Read the full review here.
Reviewer Ben Bevacqua revels in Krasznahorkai's masterpiece, saying that "Krasznahorkai’s mastery of structure, character, and language is matched by his ability to simultaneously weave all three together; readers can feel themselves physiologically immersed in the world of the book, itself a finely orchestrated system." Read the full review here.
Click here to read this week's list of pop culture's greatest hits.
Wondering where to begin with Bolaño? Giles Harvey has some advice.
Read about what they found here.
Over at The New Yorker's blog "The Book Bench," ND editor and publisher Barbara Epler discusses all things Roberto Bolaño. And don't miss the story "Labyrinth" from the January 23 issue, pulled from the forthcoming collection http://ndbooks.com/book/the-secret-of-evilThe Secret of Evil.
Read the full review here.
And tells you exactly why this version of Lispector's famous novel is better. Read the piece here.
Thomas Beller, who read selections of Niccolo Tucci during the event, offers an insider's look at 75th Anniversary reading at Cooper Union. You can read his take here, and our list of the readers and what they read is on our blog.
David Ullin immerses himself in the book, and loves every moment of the experience. Read full review here.
It's hard to resist a review titled "Tales of Jaunty Anarchy on the Nile." Read the full review of The Colors of Infamy here.
And there's no shortage of being "screwed over." Read the profile with Helen DeWitt here (and DeWitt's reaction to the profile here).
Because "the only antidote to stupidity is an agitated intelligence constantly prowling for blank spots in one’s outward seeming." Read the full review here.
Holiday Shopping Ideas
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The New Yorker looks back on "one of contemporary literature's most transformative figures," W. G. Sebald, on the tenth year anniversary of his death. Read the full story here.
Including a "compulsively scatological and apocalyptic imagination." Read the review here.
Writing for Salon, Christopher Byrd calls Lightning Rods "'A Modest Proposal' for our sexually emancipated age." Read it here.
Wherein they suggest that "reading the works of Roberto Bolaño is a bit like hitchhiking in some godforsaken frontier territory." Read the rest here.
Check out their insightful review here.
And, per usual, this sort of language is unavoidable: "Lispector has written a novel in which every word—like a mythical tail-eating snake—quietly consumes itself." Read it on their blog.
Their conclusion? "Aira is a manifestly gifted writer who may find writing all too easy a job." Read the entire review here.
In a New York Times Book Review back-page essay on the pleasures of rereading, Helen DeWitt and Patti Smith weigh in with their perennial favorites.
Over at The Millions, rather than simply list the best books of the year, they ask writers to talk about the best books they read. And Chad Harbach leads off with Kornél Esti. Read all of his picks here.
Over at Publishing Perspectives, the editor of our four forthcoming Lispector titles (and translator of our new edition of The Hour of the Star) discusses the challenge of getting her English translations just right. Read what he has to say here.
In a round-up of fireside reading recommendations, Megan O'Grady leads with The Hour of the Star. Read the article here.
December 2011 News from New Directions
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I've never felt compelled to read Franzen, but maybe I should? Salon's Nina Martyris identifies the inspiration for a particularly symbolic chair in The Corrections.
And they enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Read it here.
The entire interview, covering all three of his books in translation with New Directions, is here.
Read the entire interview here.
Read the entire review from the Sunday Book Review here. (and take a good look at the wonderful illustration)
Click here to listen to InDefinite's Podcast of Helen DeWitt reading from Lightning Rods.
At least not when sex is involved. We're talking about Lightning Rods, of course, and this reviewer is not a fan.
Sex sells, after all. Read the entire article here.
"Intelligent, funny, and absurd." Read the rest here.
Specifically The Glass Menagerie and the introduction he wrote for its deluxe edition. Read it here.
Which of course only his poetry reveals. Read the review here.
Jenny Davidson and Helen DeWitt discuss sexual fantasies, Robbe-Grillet, and businesspeak. And more. Read it here.
Read the entire article here.
Read the entire rave review here.
Christopher Glazek and Elizabeth Gumport talked to Helen DeWitt about inspiration, rage, and Berlin, among many other things. Part one; part two.
November News from New Directions
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And decides that it's the "most autobiographical of his writings." Read it here.
Special 75th Anniversary Edition
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Read it here.
Read it here.
Full review here.
Tomas Tranströmer Wins the Nobel Prize
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October News from New Directions
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Among other things, she discusses the influence of "Springtime for Hitler" on her new novel Lightning Rods.
Publisher's Weekly's Craig Morgan Teicher chats with translator Ben Moser about Clarice Lispector
September Books from New Directions
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