Pushkin Press Classics – serie

'One of the great novels of the past half century' GARTH GREENWELL

A rediscovered queer classic: the subversive, blazingly beautiful oddball romance between an ageing trans woman and a young revolutionary by a Latin American icon

It is spring 1986 and Santiago's streets are aflame with protests against the dictator Augusto Pinochet. From her lavishly decorated hovel, the Queen of the Corner embroiders linen for the wealthy, dreams of romance and listens to boleros to drown out the rioting and gunshots. When handsome young macho Carlos waltzes into her life, the ageing queer swiftly agrees to help with his clandestine activities. As a strange connection blooms, their fates careen towards that of the dictator himself.

Written in lushly imaginative prose that blends the sordid and the profound, the romantic and the militant, My Tender Matador is a transgressive queer classic of desire and revolution.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Katherine Silver.

Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) is considered one of the most important queer writers of twentieth-century Latin America and was also an activist and a performance artist. Born in Santiago, Chile, he became a renowned voice of Latin American counterculture during the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath. He received Chile's José Donoso Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is best known for his crónicas, a selection of which was published by Pushkin as A Last Supper of Queer Apostles, and one novel, My Tender Matador, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was adapted in 2020 into a critically acclaimed film by Chilean director Rodrigo Sepúlveda.

Katherine Silver's most recent translations include works by María Sonia Cristoff, César Aira, Verónica Zondek, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Julio Ramón Ribeyro. She is the former director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC), and the author of Echo Under Story.

'A revolutionary thriller, bildungsroman and cry of feminist frustration... Actual-work-of-genius territory' Sunday Times

A captivating feminist classic about a woman's struggle for independence in fascist Italy, from the author of Forbidden Notebook - with an afterword by Elena Ferrante

Alessandra has always wanted more than life offered her. Growing up in a crowded apartment block in 1930s Rome, she watches as her mother's dreams of becoming a concert pianist are stifled by marriage. When her father's traditional family try to make Alessandra marry at a young age, she rebels against the future they imagine for her.

Soon she falls passionately in love with Francesco, an anti-fascist professor, and a new world seems to open up. Working for the underground resistance, she tastes the independence that she has yearned for. What will it take for her to break free from society's expectations, and live on her own terms?

Drawing on Alba de Céspedes's own experiences during Italy's wartime uprising, Her Side of the Story is a feminist chronicle of fierce and unforgettable power.

'I owe Betz infinite gratitude...a first-rate poet, a creative spirit, and a friend to all creative spirits...an ornament to literary France...an artist with words, lovable and worthy of love' - Thomas Mann

'Maurice Betz is one of those artists whose importance only fully appears after they have disappeared' - Marcel Aymé

Walking in the Luxembourg Garden, describing encounters with enigmatic diva Eleonora Duse or an irascible Tolstoy: Rainer Maria Rilke's French translator Maurice Betz enjoyed a rare intimacy with the great poet. This account of their collaborative translation of Rilke's only novel brings the reader along on a tour of the glittering cultural scene of interwar Paris.

An elegant, poignant look at the great writer's final years, Betz's memoir, sensitively translated by Will Stone, is a portrait of genius, an evocation of a lost world, and a testament to enduring friendship.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Will Stone.

Maurice Betz (1898-1946), as well as writing poetry and novels, was a prolific translator of Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann. He worked closely with Rilke on the French translations of his works while Rilke was alive, and continued translating the poet into French in the decades following his death. He fought in both World Wars and was made a prisoner in the Second. Shortly after the war, he was found dead in a hotel room in Tours, having asked for an early wake-up call.

Will Stone is a poet, essayist and literary translator of French, Franco-Belgian and German literature. His previous translations include Rilke in Paris, also by Maurice Betz, several works by Stefan Zweig, and poems by Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke, all available from Pushkin Press.

'This extremely beautiful novel has a ripeness and wisdom all too rare in modern literature' Telegraph

'There's a certain time in life when one needs to read Hesse' Jenny Erpenbeck

With an introduction by Graham Coxon

In a monastery in medieval Germany, brilliant, analytical monk Narcissus is drawn to his new student, the impulsive, charismatic Goldmund. Despite their differences in age and temperament, the two form a deep friendship, but when Goldmund rejects the monastic life and runs away to seek experience of the wider world, their bond is tested, in this plangent, limpid masterpiece, rich with the rhythms of medieval life.

Goldmund pursues a sensual, picaresque existence, and Narcissus remains cloistered and controlled, but events and inclination bring them together again and again. One of literature's most moving portraits of friendship, Narcissus and Goldmund is also a powerful invitation to the reader: to explore the agony and ecstasy of life in the world, to seek the solace of contemplation, and to find the deep unity that exists within all of life's apparent contradictions.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Leila Vennewitz.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was born in was born in Württemberg, Germany. He resented his pious and repressive upbringing, and was determined to be 'a writer or nothing else'. His writing was greatly influenced by his travels to Asia and his friendship with psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In 1946 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Several of his novels are published by Pushkin Press Classics, including The Journey from the East, Demian and Siddhartha.

Leila Vennewitz (1912-2007) was a British-Canadian translator of German literature, known for her translations of works by Heinrich Böll and Alfred Andersch, among other authors.

A heady, rapturous novel of love and self-discovery in the south of France written by famed publisher Helen Wolff, based on her early life with Kurt Wolff

In a giddy rush, a young woman and her older lover escape the rising fascism of 1930s Berlin for a summer vacation on the Côte d'Azur. As they drive along stunning bays and linger over sumptuous meals, they are enchanted by each other. But their harmony soon falters, and the woman decides she must leave in search of a cottage of her own near Saint-Tropez. There, amid the vineyards and lemon trees, she will forge startling new connections and pass an unforgettable summer of independence and freedom.

Background for Love is an autobiographical novel by the great publisher Helen Wolff, who together with her husband, Kurt Wolff, set up Pantheon Books in America after fleeing Nazi Germany. In the fascinating companion essay, historian Marion Detjen, the author's great-niece, delves into the basis of the novel in Helen's own life as well as the political and social forces that led her to abandon hope of publishing it.

Written in 1932 and now translated into English for the first time by the author's grandson, Tristram Wolff, this is a lushly atmospheric, irresistible story of passion and self-discovery, told from the cusp of disaster.

'A strange and compelling classic of dystopian and climate fiction, one that with foreboding and deep compassion maps the psyche and the terrain of dislocation' - Jeff VanderMeer

'One might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future' - New Yorker

Ice will soon cover the entire globe. As the glacial tide creeps forward, society breaks down. Hurtling through the frozen chaos is a nameless narrator, seeking the white-haired girl he once loved, desperate to rescue her - or perhaps to annihilate her. Through nightmarish, ever-shifting scenes, she flees him and his powerful enemy, the Warden. But none of them can outrun the ice.

Anna Kavan's masterwork is an apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence, rendered in unforgettable, propulsive, hallucinatory prose.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

With an introduction by Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige and The Inverted World.

Anna Kavan (1901-1968) was born Helen Woods, the only child of wealthy British expatriates, and grew up travelling through Europe and America. She began publishing under her married name, Helen Ferguson, having left her husband in Burma and returned with her son to live in England. After a mental breakdown in the 1930s she began writing under a new name, taken from one of her characters, and with a new style. She continued writing for another three decades, while frequently using heroin and undergoing several rounds of psychiatric hospitalisation. She died shortly after the publication of Ice, her most celebrated work.

'An extraordinary book... Part Gothic fantasy, part emblematic progress through a dream world... It has a gripping hallucinogenic clarity' - Snoo Wilson

A trancelike feminist fable by Britain's foremost surrealist painter

Calcination. Putrefaction. Exaltation. Trapped on an enchanted island ruled by her uncle, a young woman must pass through the stages of alchemical transformation to escape. He wants to conquer death by magic - and she may pay the price for his ambition.

Lushly visual, rife with symbols and cries from the unconscious, Colquhoun's first novel is a surreal feminist fable, and a supreme artistic vision.

Includes 'Hexentanz', a lost chapter from the original manuscript.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

With a new introduction by Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side: A Journey Into Women, Art and the Spirit World.

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was born in British India and brought up in the United Kingdom. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and started exhibiting her paintings in the 1930s, gaining some renown as one of the few women associated with British Surrealism. She began visiting Cornwall during the Second World War, and eventually moved there, continuing to write, paint, and pursue the study of the occult until her death. As well as her novel Goose of Hermogenes, she is the author of two travelogues, The Living Stones: Cornwall and The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, both forthcoming from Pushkin Press.

'A magnificent comic novel' TLS

An exuberant farce from a treasure of world literature.

At the country estate of kindly Colonel Rostanev, parasitic houseguest Foma Opiskin has brought everyone under his sway. Now Opiskin plans to marry off his host to a wealthy widow. Will the Colonel give way to Opiskin's bullying and sacrifice the love of his life, Nastasya? Or will he finally resist the petty tyrant's demands?

Farcical and effervescent with absurdity, this short novel is a sparkling example of Dostoyevsky's comic side - and a microcosmic portrait of Russia on the verge of upheaval and transformation.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Ignat Avsey.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) trained as an engineer and began his literary career with translations. As punishment for engaging in pro­gressive political discussion, he was subjected to a mock execution and sent into exile in Siberia in his twenties. Subsequently he worked exclu­sively as a writer, touring Europe and publishing novels and journalism. Addicted to gambling, he was often near starvation. His second, very happy marriage to typist Anna Snitkina helped to stabilize his manner of living, and with her practical assistance he went on to write several masterpieces of psychological and existential fiction. Novels such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov and Notes from Underground have earned him a lasting reputation as one of the dominant figures of world literature.

Ignat Avsey (1938-2013) was born in Latvia to Russian parents, who relocated the family to Britain after the Second World War. He taught Russian language and literature at the University of Westminster. He translated several other works by Dostoyevsky, including The Karamazov Brothers and The Idiot, as well as Alexander Lernet-Holenia's novel I Was Jack Mortimer, also published by Pushkin Press.

'One hardly knows where to begin in praising Zweig's work' - Ali Smith

'The Updike of his day... Zweig is a lucid writer, and Bell renders his prose flawlessly' - New York Observer

Perfectly paced and brimming with passion - twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the twentieth century

Translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, and spanning a prolific literary career, these stories form a map of the human soul, drawn by a writer both tender and perceptive.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Anthea Bell.

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Between the wars, Zweig was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear.In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, Zweig left Austria, and lived in London, Bath and New York - a period during which he produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. He eventually settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.

Anthea Bell (1936-2018) ranked among the leading literary translators of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her work from German, French and Danish into English encompassed the writings of Kafka, Freud, E.T.A. Hoffmann, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Georges Simenon, W.G. Sebald, René Goscinny, Cornelia Funke and many others. Her translations for Pushkin Press of Stefan Zweig have reintroduced to English-language readers the work of one of the most popular European authors of the interwar period. She won numerous literary awards, some of them several times, and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2015.

'Reminds us how extremely funny he could be' A.N. Wilson, TLS

'The man more than any other who has created modern prose' James Joyce

A refreshingly accessible way in to this iconic Russian writer, focusing on his shorter works.

From scorching satire to unexpected tenderness, this selection of Dostoyevsky's short fiction shows off his dazzling versatility as a writer.

In it, a civil servant finds a new passion for his work when he's swallowed alive by a crocodile; an arrogant gentleman provokes uproar at a subordinate's wedding, and in the marital bed; and a young boy finds unexpected salvation on a cold and desolate Christmas Eve.

This vivid new translation by prestigious co-translators captures all the Russian master's sharp comedy, psychological intensity and impossible fantasy.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Nicolas Pasternak-Slater and Maya Slater

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. A strong critic of the tsarist regime, he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp followed by six years of military service in exile. A renowned writer and journalist, his masterpieces of psychological and existential fiction include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov and Notes from Underground.

'His fiction changed the way human beings think about themselves' George Saunders

'If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy' Isaac Babel

Crimea, 1854: Sevastopol's inhabitants taunt the besieging forces that keep them trapped behind defensive walls. So begins Leo Tolstoy's depiction of nine months of battle and bravery, based on his own experiences in the Crimean War.

This new translation by acclaimed translator Nicolas Pasternak Slater introduces us to long-suffering citizens, vain hussars and the courageous Kozeltsov brothers - one jaded and pragmatic soldier, one naïve and hungry for glory. Enduringly vivid, profoundly ironic, Tolstoy's portrayal of the stumble from triumph to disaster captures the absurdity at the heart of conflict.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born into the Russian aristocracy, spent his youth in aimless dissolution, and joined the army in a bid to escape his gambling debts. Sevastopol Tales, based on his experience serving as an artillery officer in the Crimean War, helped to establish his fame as a writer in the 1850s. The war helped transform him into a passionate pacifist and social agitator. He started a series of schools for the recently emancipated serfs of Russia, as well as publishing a number of literary masterpieces, most famously the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He gradually became a near-messianic figure, both lauded and persecuted by the Russian authorities. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prizes in Literature and Peace, but never won.

Nicolas Pasternak Slater is the nephew of novelist Boris Pasternak. After retiring from his career as a doctor he turned to translation, and has published several highly praised versions of great Russian authors, including Pushkin, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov.

'One of the undisputed classics of contemporary European literature' Independent

'A monumental writer' Sunday Telegraph

A stunning fresh translation of one of the most powerful stories of desire and undoing in modern literature

Erudite, respectable writer Gustav Aschenbach lives a life of structured routine. One day, as he puzzles over his stubborn writer's block, Aschenbach has a dazzling vision that leaves him with a restless urge to abandon his settled life and travel south to Venice.

On checking into his hotel, Aschenbach notices a young Polish boy of perfect, sculptural beauty: Tadzio. As he lingers on at the hotel, Aschenbach falls into an ever-deeper infatuation with the youth, whose curled blond hair and porcelain face fill him with rapture. Ignoring whispered warnings of a cholera outbreak in the city, Aschenbach chooses to stay close to Tadzio, his mind swirling with mad desire.

Classical in structure yet roiled by disturbing passion, Death in Venice is an enormously powerful story of one man's undoing.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand picked from around the globe.

Translated by Lesley Chamberlain

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was perhaps Germany's most famous twentieth-century writer. Born to a merchant family in Lübeck, Mann was preparing to enter the family business when his father suddenly died and the business was liquidated. The Manns moved to Munich, where Mann began his literary career with the epic novel Buddenbrooks (1901), which was a huge success. Further novels and stories followed, including Death in Venice (1912) and The Magic Mountain (1924); five years following publication of the latter novel, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. When Hitler came to power, Mann fled to Switzerland, and from there he escaped to California at the outbreak of the Second World War. He is buried in Switzerland, where he spent his final years.