The Antwerp Testament is Evelyn Grill's longest book to date and her most complex. It shows those who were damaged and dislocated by World War II rebuilding their lives on two continents. The male protagonist, Ulrich, a German who was seriously wounded in the war, has the misfortune of marrying into a British family that practices psychological warfare. But the sinister plots devised by humans pale in comparison to the bitter blows dealt by fate. Rife with irony, replete with doubling, this cleverly constructed novel will occupy your thoughts for a long time after you have finished reading it. Despite dire events, the novel is not devoid of humor. Grill has fun with it, right down to the leitmotivs: white lilies and yellow roses. The theme of correspondence runs through the novel. It is the topic of Ulrich's lengthy doctoral dissertation, and the means through which he keeps in touch with friends and relatives who fled Nazi Germany and settled in Toronto and New York, the means through which their stories continue. By coincidence, and correspondence, the translator knew and remained in contact with the main character for 34 years.

A composer who has already given up composing -- because of his inability to notate the music of the spheres -- becomes increasingly fixated on capturing a mysterious, eerie, distant sound, which he soon equates with all the things he desires most: the perfect woman, the perfect city, the perfect work of art. Obsessed with his impossible quest, the man breaks out of the asylum and begins a series of comic, dreamlike, and ultimately haunting adventures as he tries to locate the source of the sound that consumes him... and instead finds the root cause of all his failures.

As a small Austrian town prepares for its 1000-year jubilee, the quiet life of Roswitha, a 42-year-old tailor, is completely disrupted. There is dust and dirt everywhere because the outside of the building she lives in is being resurfaced. In the midst of the noise and chaos, one of the construction workers introduces himself and quickly moves in with her. Roswitha has to deal with escalating episodes of drunkeness and vandalism. She has almost decided that Max will have to go, when his friends and hers crowd into her apartment to watch a sensational event across the way. As the event drags on through the night and into the next day, the situation in the apartment becomes increasingly intolerable. By the time the crisis outside is resolved, two people lie dead in Roswitha's apartment.

"Abelard's Love" is an inspired retelling of the story of Abelard and Heloise--the French medieval theologian and his brilliant student--whose love affair led to a scandal that has echoed through the centuries. In the affair's aftermath, Abelard became a monk and Heloise a nun. Forgotten to history was their unwanted son.

Luise Rinser sets at center stage that son and his unique perspective on his legendary parents. The novel is cast in the form of a long letter written by the son, Astrolabe. Addressed to Heloise in the weeks after Abelard's death, the letter brings the story of this tragic family vividly to life. Rinser offers insights into each of the three participants in this family drama, yet it is the perspective of the aggrieved son that lies at the book's core. As the distinguished critic and translator Harry Zohn has remarked, "the young man's melancholy musings . . . add up to an anguished 'J'accuse' of epic dimensions."

"Concert" was one of the last books published by a Jew in Germany before Hitler came to power. The work is autobiographical, a collection of essays and vignettes that both entertain and engage the reader at a deeper level. Like Robert Schumann's piano suites, each in itself a perfect concert, Else Lasker-Schuler's "Concert" contains pieces that vary greatly in theme, mood, length, and complexity, yet they are unified by the medium and by the distinct and lyrical personality of the artist. Lasker-Schuler is able to transform and transcend the everyday scenery and events that are her points of departure. She makes magical an unmagical corner of Germany, discerns the miraculous in the neglected and ignored, and finds wisdom and comfort in prayer and cosmic perspective.

Lasker-Schuler was attuned to the world and in some ways uncannily prophetic. It may come as a surprise to some readers that Concert, published in German in 1932, contains a warning about the climatic dangers of interfering 'with the merry green leaf people who give us ozone and the breath of life.' With her respect for the natural environment and her emphasis on spiritual development rather than the materialistic, Lasker-Schuler's voice remains relevant to our own times. A recent German edition of her complete works has proven immensely popular.

Prior to the Third Reich, Lasker-Schuler had a well-established reputation in her native Germany as a poet, dramatist, and prose writer, as well as for her work in the visual arts, and she received the Kleist Prize for Literature. As a Jew, though, she was increasingly threatened by 'people wearing swastikas, ' and was forced to flee the country in 1933, never to return. She died in exile in Palestine in 1945.

This is the first English translation of any of Lasker-Schuler's prose: a challenging task because she includes sections in dialect, poems, numerous neologisms, witty alterations of German sayings, and structural emulations with phonetic echoes of famous German art songs.