A New York City hustler with a special gift for reeling in customers, Apollo, 'a pale skinned mulatto with a mournful mouth' strips at a gay sex theatre in Times Square. He is one of the most seductive and disturbing creations in recent American fiction. Unflinchingly describing the lives of hustlers, pimps, drug-addicts and transsexuals in 1990s Times Square, User speaks with the authentic voice of characters from the edge. This is a world filled with stark, hypnotic eroticism and mined with terrors peculiar to the subterranean city in the hours after midnight.

A breathless (heavily autobiographical) novelistic account of the life of a young woman who sells her body for a living, Whore is a searing look at the world's oldest profession and a confessional in the tradition of Sylvia Plath. "Cynthia," as the nameless narrator calls herself professionally, is a French-Canadian Catholic from the sticks who escapes her strict upbringing and stifling parents to move to Montreal as soon as she is old enough. One day she answers the ad of an escort agency and quickly becomes compelled by her strange new calling. Her visitors include an Orthodox Jew cheating on his piety, a boorish Muslim with a deformed arm, a never-ending parade of businessmen and fathers, and a young man whose youth and fitness disturbs her more than any of the rest of them. Cynthia never glamorizes her life--contempt, anger, and resignation ring out from the pages--but her descriptions are engrossing and her prose incisive. Nelly Arcan delivers an unyielding, poetic, and deeply personal account of one whore's life.

Another mordantly hysterical tale from the author of the cult favorite "How I Became Stupid"
A funny yet poignant tour of one young man's existential crisis, "The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection" is another short novel from France's Martin Page. Virgil comes home from work one day to a message on his answering machine-his girlfriend is breaking up with him. This news should be devastating, but instead it's deeply troubling, because Virgil doesn't know the woman and doesn't have any memory of being in a relationship with her. The event sends Virgile into a tailspin of unrelenting self-analysis, causing him to question his memory, his sanity, even his worth as a lover. The seamless translation by Bruce Benderson perfectly captures Page's delicate, witty style, bringing this audacious gem of a novel to English-speaking audiences.

Winner of France's 2004 Prix de Flore for his memoir "The Romanian: Story of an Obsession," Bruce Benderson has gained international respect for his controversial opinions and original take on contemporary society. In this collection of essays, Benderson directs his exceptional powers of observation toward some of the most debated, as well as some of the most neglected, issues of our day.
In "Sex and Isolation," readers will encounter eccentric street people, Latin American literary geniuses, a French cabaret owner, a transvestite performer, and many other unusual characters; they'll visit subcultures rarely described in writing and be treated to Benderson's iconoclastic opinions about culture in former and contemporary urban society. Whether proposing new theories about the relationship between art, entertainment, and sex, analyzing the rise of the Internet and the disappearance of public space, or considering how religion and sexual identity interact, each essay demonstrates sharp wit, surprising insight and some startling intellectual positions.
This is the first American volume of Benderson's collected essays, featuring both new work and some of his best-known writings, including his famous essay "Toward the New Degeneracy."

Originally published in France in 2012, Pascal Merigeau's definitive biography of legendary film director Jean Renoir is a landmark work,the winner of a Prix Goncourt, France's top literary achievement. Now available in the English language for the first time, Jean Renoir: A Biography , is the definitive study of one of the most fascinating and creative artistic figures of the twentieth century. The French filmmaker made more than forty films from the silent era to the late '60s and today he is revered by filmmakers and seen by many as one of the greatest of all time. Renoir made acclaimed movies in France, America, India, and Italy and became a writer during the last part of his life. An estimated 75 percent of the book details previously unknown information about the filmmaker, including Renoir's close affiliation with Communism in the '30s (when he was the Party's official director) and his work with the fascist regimes during World War II his previously uncredited Hollywood film, The Amazing Mrs. Holiday and new information on the making of his most famous films. Drawing from unpublished or little known sources, this biography is a completely fresh approach to the maker of Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game , redefining the very function of the movie director and simultaneously recounting the history of a century.