Fine independent publishing since 1936. New Directions began in 1936, when Ezra Pound told James Laughlin his poetry was "hopeless" and urged him to do "something useful" after he graduated from college.
Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, who once had difficulty finding publishers, were early New Directions authors and have remained at the core of ND's backlist of modernist writers. Interested in issuing influential foreign writers in translation, (often in bilingual editions), New Directions has been largely responsible for America's interest in Céline, André Gide, Apollinaire, Yukio Mishima, Italo Svevo, Tommaso Landolfi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Kafka, Octavio Paz, Eugenio Montale, Lorca, Nabokov, and most recently W.G. Sebald, Javier Marías, Roberto Bolaño, Inger Christensen, Uwe Timm, Yoko Tawada, Antonio Tabucchi, Bei Dao, and Victor Pelevin. And from Britain — E.M. Forster, B. S. Johnson, and H. E. Bates. New Directions now publishes about 30 books annually in hardcover and paperback.
Lean into Halloween: our CREEPY SPOOKY bundle is available at 30% off the cover price for a limited time. Eight murderous fictions by contemporary masters Spark, Solstad, Aira, Ridgway, Pelevin, Unrue, Castellanos Moya, and Cela.
The apocalypse is here!
https://www.ndbooks.com/shop/product/creepy-spooky-killer-literature/#/
"No one at the bus stop took any notice of me. Well, of course, why should they? I was not acquainted with anyone there, but that evening I felt particularly anonymous among the homegoers. Everyone looked right through me and even, it seemed, walked through me. Late autumn always sets my fancy toward sad ideas..."
A ghost story from the vault by Muriel Spark on the ND Blog.
https://www.ndbooks.com/article/the-girl-i-left-behind-me/#/
In lieu of dive bars and cuddling, why not sign up for the New Directions newsletter? New books, special offers, and texts from our writers and translators. We'll be here...
https://ndbooks.us8.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=94060051763b502e547df0464&id=c885e6f388
"Hello ficus, may I hug you?"
Christine Wunnicke's "Voyage Around My Room" up on the ND Blog.
Quarantine Song
“Whether there be a radio in the house or not, the tree brings forth her blossoms in silence.”
All of our Thomas Merton ebooks are now $4.99.
To celebrate the release of Hurricane Season in the age of social distancing,* Fernanda Melchor will be answering questions from her twitter account today at 3 pm EST.
@fffmelchor
#HurricaneSeason
"They called her the Witch, the same as her mother; the Girl Witch when she first started trading in curses and cures, and then, when she wound up alone, the year of the landslide, simply the Witch. If she’d had another name, scrawled on some timeworn, worm-eaten piece of paper maybe, buried at the back of one of those wardrobes that the older crone crammed full of plastic bags and filthy rags, locks of hair, bones, rotten leftovers, if at some point she’d been given a first name and last name like everyone else in town, well, no one had ever known it, not even the women who visited the house each Friday had ever heard her called anything else."
Read an excerpt from Fernanda Melchor's forthcoming novel HURRICANE SEASON translated by Sophie Hughes in The Paris Review:
https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/7477/they-called-her-the-witch-fernanda-melchor
Join us TONIGHT at McNally Jackson Seaport for a very special evening with National Book Award-winning author, Yoko Tawada. Featuring a tri-lingual reading in two voices with Yoko Tawada and Bettina Brandt and a conversation with the novelist Hari Kunzru.
BEHOLD! Fall 2020 featuring *drumroll* THE LOST WRITINGS OF KAFKA translated by Michael Hofmann (never ever ever translated stories!), Jenny Erpenbeck's essays, Doon Arbus' debut novel, Adam Mars-Jones, Eliot Weinberger, Hiroko Oyamada, Thalia Field, Wolfgang Koeppen, Beatriz Bracher, Bohumil Hrabal, Georges Perec, and Clarice Lispector turns 100!
Borges's LABYRINTHS is now an audiobook! UNABRIDGED. Narrated by the incredible Dominic Keating. Get it on Apple Books (https://apple.co/2OIqJ4N), Audible (https://adbl.co/2rLClLr), or your local library (https://bit.ly/2DDW7ek).
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Now, new in audio and completely unabridged, the collection that made Borges a household name in the English-speaking world. The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into th...
Only 2 days away from the National Book Awards ceremony!
Read why László Kraszhorkanai's novel BARON WENCKHEIM'S HOMECOMING is a finalist for the translation prize in a review by David Schurman Wallace for the Baffler.
https://thebaffler.com/latest/dust-to-dust-wallace
Sitting for a while with your earthly meaninglessness in the face of László Krasznahorkai’s fiction is oddly sobering, even calming.
"I came across this little figure rather late in life. Not being familiar with playing cards, still less with the tarot, I was uncomfortable when I first set eyes on him. I believe in magic figures and distrust them. They have powers. A color can derail a train."
Read an excerpt from THE FOOL & OTHER MORAL TALES by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson, in the new issue of Harper's:
"An existential portrait, a work of desperate obsession, a proto-feminist classic, and one of the most jagged renderings of female consciousness European literature has produced. In its torrent of language, paralyzing lassitude, and relentless constriction of expectation and escape, Malina condenses—and then detonates—the neurasthenic legacy of the interwar Austrian novel."—Dustin Illingworth reviews MALINA in The Nation
The Austrian writer’s 1971 book is one of the most potent renderings of female consciousness European literature has produced.
Excited to announce the release of our audio edition of WHO KILLED MY FATHER—read by Edouard Louis himself!
https://www.audible.com/pd/Who-Killed-My-Father-Audiobook/B07T3RL5KB?qid=1561223267&sr=1-2&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=3XKQHG4YC789YQM7AXH9&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_2
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. This bracing new nonfiction audiobook - read by its young superstar author Édouard Louis - is both a searing j’accuse of the viciously entrenched French class system and a wrenchingly tender love letter to his father. Who Killed My Father&nb...
I'm the chess messiah: EEG by the great Croatian writer, Daša Drndić. https://mailchi.mp/ndbooks/im-the-chess-messiah?e=fec1cb8ee9
"Like Bolaño's 2666, EEG demands we stare directly into the face of darkness” —Anderson Tepper, Vanity Fair Daša Drndić—uncompromising writer, hilarious correspondent, and loving friend—died of lung cancer last June. She was 71. Announcing the 2018 Warwick Prize, Boyd Tonkin wrote, "...
TONIGHT! The great Portuguese poet Ana Luísa Amaral and her fabulous translator Margaret Jull Costa. Don't miss it! Location: Dodge Hall, Columbia University. Moderated by Katrina Dodson and organized by Susan Bernofksy.
Organized by Susan Bernofsky, Literary Translation at Columbia, Writing Moderated by Katrina Dodson
Nina Subin, known at ND as the master of portraits, talks about stopping time in Bomb Magazime. Nina has taken iconic photographs of Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Yoko Tawada, Bei Dao, Susan Howe, and many more. Her book STILL LIFE is now available on her website.
The artist talks about portraits stopping time.
Audrey Harris on translating Amparo Davila's in The Paris Review. The NYC launch of Davila's THE HOUSEGUEST is tonight at Aeon Bookstore.
Like a dream, Amparo Dávila’s fictional realm is filled with signs and symbols, with hybrid creatures who appear to defy the laws of nature.
We’re very pleased to announce New Directions' first-ever audiobook, THE WAY OF CHUANG TZU by Thomas Merton, fabulously read by narrator Greg Chun!
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Way-of-Chuang-Tzu-Second-Edition-Audiobook/B07M9CPVWZ?qid=1547495872&sr=sr_1_1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=BAXKA5QHCFS0QQCET7FA&
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Classic writings from the great Zen master in exquisite versions by Thomas Merton, with a preface by his holiness the Dalai Lama, now in audio for the first time. Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of .....
Today, we are happy to celebrate the life of Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915—December 10, 1968) as we remember his generosity of heart, love for human beings, and mischievous wit. And we celebrate his work with a new small gift book of some of his most essential and most comforting writings: SILENCE, JOY
SILENCE, JOY on @The_Millions Must-Read Poetry: https://themillions.com/2018/12/must-read-poetry-december-2018.html
Here are four notable books of poetry publishing in December. Who is Mary Sue? by Sophie Collins Before the core of this book—a sequence that considers the pristine “Mary Sue,” a female character in fan fiction who often seems to be the “author’s idealized self”—Collins includes a gorg...
Jeff Alford of @run_spot_run on THE HOUSEGUEST: http://www.runspotrun.com/book-reviews/the-houseguest-amparo-davila/#
The Houseguest is an experience of recognizing the ineffable: feelings of dread, paranoia, and angst adopt familiar forms in these twelve excellent stories.
Anne Serre's erotic fairy tale reviewed in The New York Times! "Prim and racy, seriously weird and seriously excellent...The Governesses is not a treatise but an aria, and one delivered with perfect pitch."—Parul Sehgal, NYT
Anne Serre’s slender work of fiction, recently translated from the French, is about three carnal but innocent women working for a large family.
Forrest Gander's only NYC reading for his NBA longlisted poetry collection, BE WITH, is this Wednesday at The Poetry Project. Forrest will be reading with Rosamond S King.
Link below. Photograph by Michael Flomen.
"Be With charts the addled chronology of personal loss. Poetry often creates a supernatural-seeming rapport with the dead, but rarely has the communication between worlds felt so eerily reciprocal."—Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker
https://www.facebook.com/events/458647767957738/
TOMORROW, 7pm, at 192 Books! A celebration for A Milk Bowl of Feathers: Essential Surrealist Writings. Come toast with us!
Editor Mary Ann Caws will speak with Stephanie D’Alessandro, Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the MET.
http://www.192books.com/tuesday-september-18th-7pm/
"When I was nine years old, the world, too, was nine years old. At least, there was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance. We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as alike as two pennies."
The great Danish poet Inger Christensen's essays are forthcoming for the first time in a beautiful translation by Susanna Nied. Read "Interplay" from The Condition of Secrecy in this issue of Harper's Magazine. https://harpers.org/archive/2018/09/the-conditions-of-secrecy-inger-christensen/
"A beautiful and otherworldly book; a work of poetry steeped in history and rich with imagination. Douglas has a way of conveying the sense of wonder that powers the island's creative spirit."—Juan Vidal, NPR
Marcia Douglas's new book imagines a resurrected Bob Marley, living in a clock tower and conversing with spirits — but Douglas also honors and elevates the voices of the women in Marley's orbit.
MARVELLOUS EQUATIONS OF THE DREAD by Marcia Douglas is out today!
I am on the rock and then I check a stock I have to run like a fugitive to save the life I live Im gonna be iron like a lion in zion (repeat) Iron lion zion ...
Introducing Anne Serre!
Serre’s first work to be translated into English is a hypnotic tale of three governesses and the sensuous education they provide. Roaming the country estate of a staid married couple, Monsieur and Mad
"Strikingly of the moment"—The New Yorker on The Desert and Its Seed
When Barón Biza wrote “The Desert and Its Seed,” he feared that its lurid backstory would dominate attention. But the work is strikingly of the moment.
Happy birthday Dag Solstad! And just in time, a review from the New York Times Book Review.
"All of the whispers have been right: Solstad is a vital novelist."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/books/review/dag-solstad-armand-v-t-singer.html
He’s Norway’s greatest living writer, and two more of his novels — “T Singer” and “Armand V” — have recently been translated.
BEHOLD! Winter 2019. Featuring Dasa Drndic, Rachel Ingalls, Robert Lax, Edouard Louis, Rivka Galchen, Jean Fremon, Qurratulain Hyder, César Aira, Christine Wunnicke, Ana Luisa Amaral, Adonis, Vila-Matas, Mishima, and Lispector!
The women in Marcia Douglas’s books are proud women: they tuck their sorrow silently into the folds of their skirts, or release them audibly as they chant and gyrate to pulsating dancehall beats. They are the descendants of Queen Nanny, the Maroon chieftain who, according to legend, could catch the bullets of the British soldiers between her teeth.
Marcia Douglas discusses her forthcoming novel, THE MARVELLOUS EQUATIONS OF THE DREAD.
"Posthumous books almost always feel half-formed, coincidental, unpublished for a reason....THE SOLITARY TWIN however, may well be the last great surprise Mathews pulled out of his deep bag of tricks. It is funny, perplexing, consistent and unusual, with all the characteristic Mathews obsessions. It may also be one of the best places to start enjoying his work."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/books/review/solitary-twin-harry-mathews.html
In “The Solitary Twin,” by Harry Mathews, fractured identities come together in small, miraculous revelations that never feel contrived at all.
Lesley Harrison, author of BLUE PEARL:
Maybe this is just being over-romantic, but I can’t see how generations and generations of thinking and movement can be suddenly cut off. I can’t see how it’s not there as a residue, somehow, in our orientation to the coast and to the sea. For me, when I’m out walking the dog and I meet somebody, we always stand with our back to the land, facing out to sea. It’s always the first thing that we talk about. People make a lot of jokes about British people talking about the weather, but it’s true. We say, Oh, did you see that sunset? Or, Yeah, there’s weather coming. People are very much orientated toward the coastline and what’s out there beyond the horizon. You’re on the edge of something much greater, not just geographically, but on a much deeper level. And I find it so interesting that when you talk to people in this part of the world these vowel sounds, or sometimes whole words, just reappear on a completely separate part of the coastline with a gap of several hundred miles in between. If you’re transporting language, I think, what else are you transporting as well, you know?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2018/05/Northness-Lesley-Harrison-in-Conversation
Lesley Harrison and I met in Manhattan on one of those increasingly common hot October mornings when it still feels like summer. She was visiting New York from her home...
New York, NY
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when New Directions posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Laszlo Krasznahorkai on the way to winning the AEGON Prize
Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror tonight at Film Society of Lincoln Center, introduced by Susan Howe at 7pm!
Grand finale of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival welcoming ceremony! Party!
The grand finale of the welcoming ceremony at Ubud Writers Festival courtesy of Barbara Epler!
A visitor!
UpSizeToday Entrepreneur & Entertainment Maga
95 E 161st St
Manhattan Periodontal Associates
116 Central Park S Ste 3
Helvidius Group - Journal of Politics & Socie
515 Alfred Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway, MC 2601
