Fiction in translation

Leo Tolstoy embarked on 'Childhood, Boyhood, Youth' in his early 20s. Though he later regarded his first published sketches as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', they provide a highly expressive self-portrait which makes clear the man and the writer Tolstoy was to become.

When a young man's girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own. When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts an...

'Closely Watched Trains', which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the Prague Spring, is a classic of postwar literature which justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of today.

Katia has spent her childhood in the eastern shadow of the Berlin Wall. For her father, refugee of the civil war in Spain, the communist side of Germany represents everything he fought and suffered for. Katia knows no other way of life, until a chance encounter with a young man from the West leav...

Both Joseph K in 'The Trial' and K in 'The Castle' are victims of anonymous governing forces beyond their control. Both are atomised, estranged and rootless citizens deceived by authoritarian power. In 'America', Karl Rossmann also finds himself isolated and confused when he is sent to America by...

This autobiographical novel, regarded as Mishima's finest book, is the haunting story of a Japanese boy's development towards homosexuality during and after the Second World War.

Salome was bullied for years and no one did a single thing to help her. One day she finally snapped. Now at just sixteen years old, she's being held in a secure unit for young offenders Salome's counsellor, the man whose good opinion is key to her release, is best known for his racist gaffes on r...

A tale of intense friendship and suppressed passion. 1 of the 3 new pocket editions of some of Stefan Zweig's best-loved novellas. Translated by Anthea Bell.

Sometimes work can be murder. The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for. restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder. The 'natural deaths' he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here,...

Two deaths - the suicide of a recently fired worker and the murder of an unscrupulous businessman - lead Montalbano to the Halcyon, a mysterious ship that visits Vigata's port each day. With very few crewmen, no passengers and a stern large enough to land a helicopter, it piques the Inspector's i...