europe fiction

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2nd pr., 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Introduction by Edmund Wilson, translated from French by Derek Coltman. "When A Season in the Life of Emmanuel first appeared in 1966, it was hailed as a masterpiece both in North American and in Western Europe. Marie-Claire Blais's stunning accomplishment was to evoke rural Quebec with both the knowledge and the passion of a latter-day Zola." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, paper-covered boards, 172 pages. One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film-violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise-are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 283 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy. In Joanna Scott's breakthrough novel Arrogance, the Austrian artist Egon Schiele comes to prismatic life in a narrative that defies convention, history, and identity. A self-professed genius and student of August Klimt, Scott's Schiele repeatedly challenges the boundaries of early twentieth-century Europe. Thrown in jail on charges of immorality, Schiele's Mephistophelean reputation only grows in stature until at the age of twenty-eight, the artist dies in the Great Flu Pandemic. Told from a crosscurrent of voices, viewpoints and times, this stunning novel won Scott a nomination for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award.

Hardcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st US, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 275 pages. First published in 1957 in Poland, Bacacay(a nod to his street in Buenos Aires) is a collection of 12 short stories by Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1968), one of the major European literary figures of the 20th century. Stunningly original in both style and content, these stories are often hilarious yet have an undercurrent of profound moral disquiet and horror when the respectable turns slowly but inexorably into the outrageous, conveying both the horrors of upper-class life and the deepest anguish of the human condition. Gombrowicz has perfect pitch for language; he revels in linguistic play, combining words in extraordinary ways. The commonplace and the everyday are juxtaposed with the bizarre and unsettling to make a world in which unspeakable subconscious urges have a habit of poking through the surface of ordinary life, leaving permanent scars. Bacacayis a brilliant series of satires on the limitations, quirks and phobias of the upper class. In Gombrowicz's hands, words create worlds. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Atlantic Monthly, Uncorr. Proof wraps, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback. Uncorrected proof. Like new.The book opens with the disappearance of a man named Franko Bradovich in Kosovo. Franko, a native Montanan posing as a local, was a spy of sorts, an operative who was helping the Lucani (a loose affiliation of DEA, FBI, CIA, etc. agents operating outside the law) bust a drug trafficking scheme from Bulgaria through Kosovo and Serbia to Europe. Franko was living with the family of a farmer named Daliljaj (and was in love with the farmer's daughter Fedima) and an apparently helpful American-raised Slav (Bozi Bazok), who's become part of the Serb army's shock troops, has warned Franko that the army was headed toward them with bloodshed in mind. Later, though, Franko, who's been posing as a drug trafficker, is brought in by local police for questioning and is beaten--making Bazok's helpfulness questionable at best. Either way, Franko can't really afford to stick around. Bazok agrees to help him and, reluctantly, Daliljaj, Fedima, and their relatives, escape the sweep, in exchange for the massive quantities of drugs he believes Franko is hiding. But Bazok betrays him and slaughters Daliljaj and all of Fedima's other family while they wait for Franko to return with transport. When Franko returns, Bazok has disappeared, taking Fedima with him.

Hardcover. Boston, Roberts Bros., reprint, 1892, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright blue cloth stamped in maroon, making the front cover hard to read. Spine stamped in bright gilt. Many b&w text and full-page illustrations, not credited. A story of twins brought up in Europe by their uncle, whose full story remains a mystery. Inscription on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Osgood and Company, 1st US, 1879, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 281 pages, bright green cloth, beveled edges. First American Edition with 1879 on title page. Bright green cloth with gilt titles to spine. Previous owner's signature and date (June 27th 1879) in pencil on blank page preceeding title. There is a light water stain to bottom corner of pages, limited to the margin. It's more pronounced at back of book. Small chip to front endpaper at top corner. Pages slightly wavy. Two 4" stains on several pages where 4 leaf clover was laid in. Over all a tight, attractive copy despite the minor flaws.

hardcover. London, Sinclair-Stevenson , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 293 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Gilt titles on spine. Illustrated end papers and paste downs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Novel based on a true piece of colonial history when 25 European radicals met on Lamu planning to travel inland & set up a Utopia on Mount Kenya.

Softcover. NY, Hard Case Crime, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 254 pages. A man. A woman. A kiss in the dark. That is how it begins. But before his nightmare ends, Prescott Marshall will learn that kisses and darkness can both hide evil intent - and that the worst darkness of all may be lurking inside him. Lost for more than half a century and never before published under Cornell Woolrich's real name, FRIGHT is a breathtaking noir crime novel worthy of the writer who has been called "the Hitchcock of the written word" and "one of the giants of mystery fiction." Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Fright, a novel set in 1915. A year from Woolrich's childhood but one he recreates with an astonishing attention to detail. (Slang, music, fashion, the distant echoes of the war being waged in Europe, etc.) Fright is very much a period piece albeit one that is timeless in its treatment of guilt and paranoia. Two emotional states the author had more than a passing familiarity with. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 282 pages, illustrated in b&w and color. Although Surrealism is usually associated with the 1920s and 1930s, it remained a vital force in Paris throughout the postwar period. This important book offers the first detailed account in English of the trajectory of the French Surrealists in the 1950s and 1960s, giving particular emphasis to the significance of myth for the group in its reception of science fiction and its engagement with fantastic art. Offering new readings of the art and writings of the later generation of Surrealists, Gavin Parkinson demonstrates how they were connected to the larger cultural and political debates of the time. Whereas earlier Surrealist art and writing drew on psychoanalytic practices, younger Surrealists engaged with contemporary issues, ideas, and themes of the period of the Cold War and Algerian War such as parapsychology, space travel, fantastic art, increasing consumerism in Europe, emerging avant-gardes such as Nouveau Realisme, and the rise of the whole genre of conspiracy theory, from Nazi occultism to flying saucers. Futures of Surrealism offers a unique perspective on this brave new world. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2003, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 278 pages, very clean and tight copy.The Great Fire was the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction. More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard returns to fiction with a novel that in the words of Ann Patchett "is brilliant and dazzling..."The Great Fire is an extraordinary love story set in the immediate aftermath of the great conflagration of the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.

Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 218 pages. Mylar cover. Remainder mark to bottom edge, else like new. "A haunting triptych of the dispossessed and the abandoned" - in Africa where a man is recounting his days during the slave trade, in America with a young man serving a sentence of life imprisonment, and in Europe, where a woman, survivor of the Holocaust, realizes that she cannot really escape.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in a very worn dust jacket with tape repairs. Black cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Vidal's second novel, a work with some gay aspects but one in which the author felt he played things a bit too safely. "Robert Holton has just returned from the torment and strife of war in Europe and settled in a solitary existence working for a New York stockbroking business The haunting memories of nights of love spent in Florence are suppressed as he struggles to succeed in an arid city." Book is tight and clean.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putman's Sons, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice, unclipped dust jacket, 447 pages. B&w photos. Although he aspired to Princeton, Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff (aka Shaw) had to settle for local Brooklyn College, where he seems to have enjoyed football more than his studies. From his mid-20s, however, Shaw (1913-1984) was a highly regarded New Yorker short story writer ("The Girls in Their Summer Dresses") and left-wing playwright ( Bury the Dead ), and later became a successful Hollywood script writer and novelist ( The Young Lions ; Rich Man, Poor Man ). This sympathetic, objective biography, by a Vanity Fair contributing editor, convincingly shows how Shaw's career, character and fiction, influenced more by Hemingway's lifestyle than by his writing, were marked by incongruities. Far from abating with age, his romantic and alcoholic appetites overwhelmed him. Years of high living in Europe, surrounded by adoring friends, softened his self-judgment, and he took to writing "fluffy essays for swells." The New Yorker dropped him, and "serious" critics panned his novels. Shnayerson capably contrasts Shaw's inclinations and personality with his subject matter and literary output, and is especially astute at explaining the complications of being a commercially successful midcentury American writer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ten Speed Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, no dust jacket issued, 201 pages. This sweeping, full-color comic book biography tells the complete life story of Jack Kirby, co-creator of some of the most enduring superheroes and villains of the twentieth century for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and more. Critically acclaimed graphic novelist Tom Scioli breathes visual life into Kirby's life story--from his days growing up in New York during the Great Depression and discovering a love for science fiction and cartoons to his time on the frontlines in the European theatre of World War II where he experienced the type of action and adventure he'd later imbue his comic pages with, and on to his world-changing collaborations at Marvel with Stan Lee, where the pair redefined comics as a part of pop culture.

Hardcover. New York, Holt Rinehart Winston , 3rd pr., 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 191 pages. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In a small European hotel in the late 1940s a bizarre group of characters, who all seem to be on the run from some past financial, personal or political horror, come together.

Hardcover. Prague, SNDK, 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 140 pages. A collection of Czech/Yugoslavian fables illustrated in color by Vladimir Brehovzsky. Clean.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright wraparound dust jacket. Ramona, written by Helen Hunt Jackson, is a timeless work of historical fiction that first captured hearts in 1884. Set against the rugged beauty of post-Mexican-American War California, this powerful novel weaves together romance, cultural heritage, and social justice in a narrative that resonates deeply with readers. We follow the life of a young woman of mixed Native American and European descent as she navigates the complexities of identity, love, and survival in a land fraught with change. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Paris, Baudry's European Library, 1st, 1838, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, calf binding with title label on spine. Illustrated with 8 b&w engravings. Well written, entertaining legends, history and folklore of the Rhine, including the Mouse Tower, Hildegard von Bingen, St. Ursula, etc. Cover is scuffed with surface scars, but binding is firm. 354 pages. Minor foxing. Aside from cover appearance, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1st US, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering, 260 pages. Originally entitled ADEPTS OF AFRICA, SHADOWS OF ECSTACY, which was written in seven weeks in 1925, was the first novel Williams wrote but the fifth to be published in 1933. Follows the story of Nigel Constantine, an evangelical preacher who discovers the ability to cheat death. The charismatic occult leader stirs up an African revolt against Western Europe, with predictably devastating results. An unusual work on the occult and spiritualism, dealing with themes of colonialism, power, and global politics. Charles Williams, 1886-1945, was an English writer and theologian. He was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and was a member of their informal Oxford literary group, the Inklings. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 209 pages. Life in prehistoric Europe is recreated with drama and suspense as Shiva is kidnapped by an elder and must face the Ordeal by Poison. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Prague, SNDK, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, SIGNED BY WENIG. Czech language. Black & white pen-line drawings in color by Mikolase Alse. Red cloth with gilt decoration.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday & Company, Book Club Ed., 1960, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 187 pages, Illustrations by Shane Miler. Exciting adventure of Peter the Hermit's squire, Bennet and the story of the First Crusade in 1099 Europe. Endpapers map.

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st US, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with Nobel Prize sticker on front, 992 pages. The Nobel Prize-winners richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas-and a new unrest-begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.