“The month of January. Night time. North wind blowing. The fire in the hearth was going out.” This is where Alexandros Papadiamantis’s The Murderess begins—in cramped, dark quarters on a dirtpoor island in the Aegean Sea. A man snores, a sleepless woman tosses and turns, a baby coughs and cries. It is a hundred years ago, but it could be anytime, and it goes on. Hadoula, a woman of sixty or so, an old witch her neighbors say, is trying to rock the baby, her granddaughter, to sleep, even as she gives way to “bitter wandering thoughts.” All her life Hadoula has shown herself to be a clever, industrious, tough woman, and yet now it strikes her:

She had never done anything except serve others. When she was a little girl she had served her parents. When she was mated, she became a slave to her husband, and at the same time, because of her strength and his weakness, she was his nurse. When she had children she became a slave to her children, and when they had children of their own, she was slave to her grandchildren.

Her life, or anywoman’s. Boys are frail and often die. Grown up, they go away to sea or America. Women are left behind looking after the helplessly young and the hopelessly old, struggling to scrape together dowries for daughters so that their daughters can enjoy the same life their mothers are sick of. Hadoula finds herself hoping against hope that her sickly granddaughter will die. And then she realizes that she can take fate into her own hands. “That was all,” the story goes.

Crime is freedom. Day breaks. Hadoula, unsuspected, leaves the house of mourning and goes to the mountains to pick herbs. She looks for a sign that God approves what she has done. Papadiamantis is as extraordinary a describer of the natural world, full of mingled welcome and menace, as he is of the toiling mind and heart:

The old woman climbed higher up to the steep top of the valley. Below her the river cut deep through the Acheilas ravine, and its stream filled all the deep valley with soft murmurs. In appearance it was motionless and lakelike, but in reality perpetually in motion under the tall and longtressed planes. Among mosses and bushes and ferns it prattled secretly, kissed the trunks of the trees, creeping like a serpent along the length of the valley, green-coloured from leafy reflections, kissing and biting at once at the rocks and the roots, a murmuring, limpid stream, full of little crabs which ran to hide in piles of sand, while a shepherd, letting the little lambs graze on the dewy greenery, came to lean down over the water, and pull out a stone to hunt them with.

Crime is freedom, but also compulsion. It is a new world that must be discovered again and again. Eventually, Hadoula’s own uneasy conscience leads her to flee her village and family. Two policemen (Papadiamantis always identifies them as the two policemen, as if they were interchangeable) pursue her. They are as clueless and bumbling as the Keystone Kops—Hadoula always evades them—and yet, stupid as they are, they are always still there, still on her trail. Hadoula flees to the mountain at the center of the island and she flees to the sea. She seeks open space, the opposite of the cramped, abysmal conditions that she has endured throughout her life, but then there is nowhere left for her to flee.

A feeling of inescapable confinement is central to this stark and startling short novel, even as the story is no less about the irrepressible desire to break free. After her initial crime, Hadoula can find no rest. She has left behind the life she was born to only to find that she is haunted by herself. She has discovered herself as a crime seeking solution, or, more traditionally, a sinner salvation.

This restlessness and searchingness is captured in the very language of Papadiamantis’s book, which mixes registers that are often kept apart: the sacred and the secular, the profane and the profound, the cruel and the comic. It is a wild book. Papadiamantis, who lived from 1851 to 1911 and is commonly described as the founder of modern Greek fiction, is notoriously hard to translate. The translator, the late Peter Levi, a fine poet who served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry, discusses the difficulties and how he dealt with them in his introduction to The Murderess. What he came up with here—with a little help, he acknowledges, from John Berger—is beautiful and strange and a real work in English. Listen, for example, to the liquid tones and artful repetitions in the river passage quoted above.

What kind of book is this? A murder story, obviously, and a story of flight and pursuit. It is also a story of self-discovery and self-abandonment. It is certainly a story that holds the reader’s attention through and through. Readers may be reminded of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, of The Mayor of Casterbridge or Camus’s The Stranger. Above all, it’s a book that hails from the borderlands. Papadiamantis wrote it at a time and in a place that lacked immediate models for such an endeavor. The novel was a novelty. He had read the new French realists and longtime popular fixtures like Dumas and Walter Scott. At the same time, he had studied to be a priest and was steeped in the old Greek liturgy. From these unlikely elements, he had to fashion not just a story but a new language and a whole genre. It’s that, I think, that gives this work its uncanny power, the power of first discovery. Encountering this book, about a woman’s desperate effort to defeat the inevitability of fate, we feel the force of Papadiamantis’s own primal encounter with the possibilities of fiction.

A last word. Long ago, Ben Sonnenberg published a fine piece about Papadiamantis by Maria Margaronis in his magnificent quarterly Grand Street. It was a rare notice of this great writer in English, and I remember feeling that I must read him. So much began with Ben, who, though confined for many years to a wheelchair, possessed a sensibility and intellect of marvelous reach and agility. He died in June. He was a great supporter of New York Review Books and a dear friend. To his suggestion, NYRB Classics owes Tibor Dery’s Niki and a series of new translations from great Spanish authors that we will publish in years to come. To our Children’s Collection, he contributed The Bear That Wasn’t and The Sorely Trying Day. He is greatly missed. Who will tell us what to do next now?

Edwin Frank, Editor
NYRB Classics

We are excited to announce that Richard Howard’s translation of Alien Hearts, Guy de Maupassant’s sixth and last novel, is a finalist for the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation’s Translation Prize.

Howard, the author of fourteen volumes of poetry, has published more than one hundred fifty translations from the French, including an NYRB Classics edition of Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece. His numerous honors include a Pulitzer Prize for Untitled Subjects, a collection of poetry, and a National Book Award for his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. His translation of Alien Hearts—a novel once described by Walter Benjamin as “containing such inconceivably beautiful sentences, I would have liked to memorize some”—is the first in over a hundred years. With his characteristically scrupulous attention to the details of language, Howard reveals the beauty, intricacy, and intensity of Maupassant’s writing. Writes Harpers, “The details crystallize, the senses and sentences sharpen… This is classic Maupassant, beautifully rendered by Howard.”

Since its founding in 1976, the French-American Foundation has served as a nongovernmental link between the United States and France, encouraging the international relationship through “programs that deepen the understanding and appreciation of each country for the other by providing a platform to share knowledge and best practices.” Similarly, the Florence Gould Foundation is devoted to French-American exchange, scholarship and friendship. This marks the twenty-third year of the Foundations’ annual collaborative effort to honor preeminent English translations of French prose.

The winner of this year’s prize will be announced at the Awards Ceremony held on the evening of Thursday, September 16 at the Century Association in New York.

Today marks the anniversary of Belgium’s independence from the Netherlands and, in 1831, the coronation of the first king of Belgium. So, it is particularly fitting that Georges Simenon’s Pedigree, the magnum opus of Belgian writing, is released this week. An epic merger of fiction and autobiography, Pedigree has been heralded by Luc Sante as “quite possibly the greatest single work of Belgian literature.”

Simenon, who was born in Liège, Belgium, was the prolific creator of the popular Inspector Maigret series as well as the romans durs, or psychological novels. He wrote over 450 novels and short stories throughout his lifetime, and more than 500 million copies of his books have been printed in over 55 languages. NYRB Classics has previously published nine Simenon titles, including Dirty Snow, Red Lights, and Three Bedrooms in Manhattan.

Pedigree stands alone among Simenon’s works, not only because of its length, scope, and attention to autobiographical detail. It uniquely evokes a national experience, describing his Belgian childhood with both sensory intensity and a full, deep understanding of daily life. Sante, in his introduction to the novel, writes that Pedigree is an unparalleled homage to the Belgian quotidian:

Inhabitants of countries more often depicted in literature may become blasé at reading the same old apercus concerning their lands retailed again and again, but for Belgians who have only experienced things firsthand and unmediated, the effect is startling, a concentrated series of shocks of recognition. All the tropes of petty conversation are there on the page, all the minor superstitions, the strictures on dressing children, the religious-holiday baked goods, the precise cuts of meat that mark different grades of economic well-being, the exact shadings of social cruelty, the odors of shops, the styles of deviance, the disposition of rooms, the forms of address… Pedigree is the embodiment of this homeland of the mind.

Lucille Frackman Backer agrees, writing that “Simenon in Pedigree does for Liège what Joyce did for Dublin: he evokes the city with such immediacy that we feel we’ve walked in its streets.” The autobiographical novel is a tribute not only to Simenon’s own story, but also to the national history it mirrors and probes.

We are delighted to announce that, though published just this month, Frans G. Bengtsson’s The Long Ships has already received two reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle and NPR.org both herald Bengtsson’s novel as a thrilling, intrigue-filled read perfect for the summer.

The Long Ships, originally published in Swedish in 1941, is an epic adventure set in the fantastic world of the tenth century AD. The NYRB Classics edition includes an introduction by long-time enthusiast Michael Chabon, who calls it “a novel with the potential to please every literate human being.”

Chabon is also the novel’s reviewer and recommender for The San Francisco Chronicle, where he champions The Long Ships as this summer’s most exciting read: “It’s thrilling, beautifully written, dry and witty and touching, a classic but little-known historical adventure novel by the Swedish novelist, just out in a handsome reprint from the New York Review of Books, though marred by a tiresome introduction by some windbag.”

Michael Schaub, writing for NPR.org, places The Long Ships at the top of his list of “Historical Fiction: The Ultimate Summer Getaway.” “If you want to be taken back to a time when, say, the ocean was full of Viking long ships instead of leaking oil,” he writes, “wait no more… Even readers with zero interest in the Europe of a millennium ago will want to keep turning the pages. All novels should be so lucky as to age this well.”

Schaub and Chabon agree that The Long Ships is a timelessly entertaining text—it is an escapist indulgence perfect for the summer months.

We are excited to announce that Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver received June reviews in both The Nation and The Believer.

Jansson’s novel, an understated yet exacting portrait of two women trapped in the relentless winter of a small Scandinavian fishing village, was first published in Swedish in 1982, but NYRB’s edition marks its first English publication. In 2008, NYRB Classics reissued The Summer Book, another of Jansson’s novels.

The True Deceiver, as its title suggests, is interested in dissolving the distinctions between truth and deception, honesty and lies. Writes Maria Margaronis in The Nation, “The uncertainties laid bare go to the heart of human relationships: is there such a thing as kindness, or is all generosity ultimately self-serving? Is truthfulness always honorable, or can it be another form of deceit?”

Theodore McDermott, in The Believer, compares Jansson’s intricately constructed prose to a watch: “All those mechanisms [are] carefully crammed into so small a space, performing their task so unrelentingly… The True Deceiver makes storytelling seem simple by marking the narrative in only the most lucid, concrete sentences.” In its spare, incisive language, he argues, the novel brilliantly cultivates the illusion that Jansson and her characters are somehow connected: “Jansson complicates our willingness to believe that The True Deceiver is strictly fiction, encourages us to consider the novel’s world as being real, and, in doing so, deepens our engagement. I’m thinking that this is a stunning novel, a fiction that becomes, through Jansson’s efficient precision, a true deception.”

Margaronis and McDermott are intrigued and compelled by The True Deceiver, and both regard it as a deeply significant work of deliberate uncertainty. Jansson’s novel, they agree, is as relentlessly thought-provoking as it is poignant, eloquent.

NYRB Classics has many reading group guides now available. You can download the PDF for The True Deceiver here and for The Summer Book here .

Wickedly funny and delightfully sad, Three Ladies Beside the Sea is a tale of love found, love lost, and love never-ending. Edward Gorey’s off-kilter Edwardian maidens are the perfect accompaniment to opera librettist Rhoda Levine’s lilting text.

The place is remote:
Three houses beside the sea.
The Characters are Few:
Laughing Edith of Ecstasy,
Edith so happy and gay.
Smiling Catherine of Compromise,
She smiles her life away.
And then there is Alice of Hazard,
A dangerous life leads she.
The question in the plot is quite simple:
Why is Alice up in a tree?
The answer can be discovered:
Edith and Catherine do.

“First, three cheers—large noisy ones—two huzzahs and one hurrah for The New York Review Children’s Collection. They have been reissuing lost and neglected juvenile classics, wonders of children’s literature that a new generation of children will be dazzled by, charmed by, and God willing, read in their beautiful red cloth bindings as they encounter the pleasures of odd characters and freshly minted language which just might beat the joys of video games…they are astonishingly quiet and deliciously gentle, with just a dash of danger, something every child needs in their life to counteract the effects of a noisy, aggressive world….The latest of these books to be reissued is Three Ladies Beside the Sea by Rhoda Levine… Ms. Levine’s wry imagination and Mr. Gorey’s powerfully epicene drawings (figure that one out) constitute a whole new country for a child to visit or for a lucky grandfather to act as tour guide. …This is, of course, a must for the many Edward Gorey fans of all ages, and a chance to discover the fine poetry of Rhoda Levine. I read this one to my five year old grand-daughter because it is just long enough to be engaging and just short enough to be wiggle proof, and just wise enough to set a young imagination free as a bird.” —Sherman Yellen, The Huffington Post

We are especially pleased to announce the publication of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, selected by The Guardian as one of 1,000 novels you must read before you die. Take advantage of a limited 25% discount on this most recent NYRB Classic, and discover the elegant craft of Brian Moore’s debut novel that launched his distinguished literary career.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

By Brian Moore
Afterword by Mary Gordon

Dreary minutes marked the days, but Miss Hearne put loneliness aside on Sunday morning. She was the definition of a city spinster, brought up in Belfast with no family save for an ailing aunt she spent her youth nursing, and barely any friends. She scraped by with an inherited annuity and the earnings from a few piano lessons, moving from boarding house to boarding house—always in what used to be the best parts of the city—and stitching herself further into the seams of a solitary life. But like a new key, Sunday offered threads of opportunity. It was a dependable day for communion (even if it was coerced), and a chance for her to make new impressions, to confess her secret vices and forgive her indiscretions, and above all, it was a new chance to believe that there was something more to passion than suffering, and that maybe, this time, love might finally find her.

The breakfast table at her new boarding house on Camden Street was where she met Mr. Madden. He was an American, or rather an Irishman who’d lived in America for quite some time. His reasons for return were not entirely unclear, although he was surely wealthy from working in the hotel business there. Perhaps he too was looking to open a new door, settle down, and start anew? There was something deeper to him—something darker, she knew the signs—but she would choose to put aside prejudice and wouldn’t pry, because time was ticking and unlike other men, he didn’t look away when Judith caught his eye.

A romance of any sort in a boarding house does not go unnoticed, and soon hushed whispers of disapproval are heard throughout the hallways, especially from the landlady, Mr. Madden’s sister. With her worldly passions threatened and her secret life possibly exposed, Judith turns to The Church that she could once rely on. What she finds instead is a cold confessional full of impassivity—one that fails to bring her any comfort, and which sends her faith further into crisis. She has no option but to repent. After all, penitence gives strength, and attrition leads to absolution. But tell that to a lonely soul, facing an eternity of dreary day after dreary day.

Made into an award winning movie starring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins, Brian Moore’s compassionate portrait of a woman trapped by disillusionment and destroyed by self and circumstance has forever enshrined Judith Hearne in the gallery of literature’s unforgettable women.

A “very fine writer, also seriously neglected…I just don’t understand why he hasn’t yet won a wider audience. Every good writer I know admires his work. I’ve always thought Judith Hearne is a masterpiece.” —Richard Yates

“Brian Moore [wrote] a superb first novel; The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne reads as freshly, and as heart-breakingly, today as it did when it first appeared in 1955.” —John Banville

“The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is, to my notion, everything a novel should be.” —Harper Lee (New York Times, 1960)

 

View the reading group guide (pdf)

Forty years after it was first published, Troubles, by J G Farrell, was announced, on May 19, 2010, as the winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize — a one-off prize to honour the books published in 1970, but not considered for the prize when its rules were changed.

It won by a clear majority, winning 38% of the votes by the international reading public, more than double the votes cast for any other book on the shortlist.

Troubles is the first in Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, which was followed by The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and The Singapore Grip (1978). The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973 and was shortlisted for the Best of the Booker, a special award created to mark the 40th anniversary of the prize in 2008. J G Farrell died in 1979. Farrell’s trilogy is published by NYRB Classics in the US & Canada.

Set in Ireland in 1919, just after the First World War, Troubles tells the tragic-comic story of Major Brendan Archer who has gone to visit Angela, a woman he believes may be his fiancée. Her home, from which he is unable to detach himself, is the dilapidated Majestic, a once grand Irish hotel, and all around is the gathering storm of the Irish War of Independence.

The Guardian wrote, “The evidence of change and decay at the Majestic is no parochial phenomenon and it is this feeling of the particular reflecting the universal, a feeling so successfully pervading page after page of this clever book that makes it a tour de force.”

Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the Man Booker Prizes comments, ‘Troubles is a novel of such lasting quality that it has never been out of print in the 40 years since it was first published. Had this been the winning novel in 1970, JG Farrell would have gone on to become the first author to win the Booker Prize twice.”

For more information about the Man Booker Prizes click here.