Until the age of fifty-two, the protagonist of On the Edge of Reason suffered a monotonous existence as a highly respected lawyer. He owned a carriage and wore a top hat. He lived the life of "an orderly good-for-nothing among a whole crowd of neat, gray good-for-nothings." But, one evening, surrounded by ladies and gentlemen at a party, he hears the Director-General tell a lively anecdote of how he shot four men like dogs for trespassing on his property. In response, our hero blurts out an honest thought. From this moment, all hell breaks loose. Written in 1938, On the Edge of Reason reveals the fundamental chasm between conformity and individuality. As folly piles upon folly, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, reason itself begins to give way, and the edge between reality and unreality disappears.

A bold new collection of the writings of Miroslav Krleza, in English for the first time Miroslav Krleza was a giant of Yugoslav literature, yet remarkably little of his writing has appeared in English. In a body of work that spans more than five dozen books, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays, Krleza steadfastly pursued a radical humanism and artistic integrity. Harbors Rich in Ships gives English-speaking readers an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate the astonishing breadth of Krleza's literary creations. Beautifully translated by Zeljko Cipris, this collection of seven representative early texts introduces a new audience to three stories from Krleza's renowned antimilitarist book, The Croatian God Mars; an autobiographical sketch; a one-act play; a story from his collection of short stories; One Thousand and One Deaths; and his signature drama, The Glembays, a satirical account of the crime-ridden origins of one of Zageb's most aristocratic families. Born in 1893 Zagreb, then a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Miroslav Krleza died in 1981 Zagreb, after it had become part of Croatia, a republic in socialist Yugoslavia. He was educated in military academies that served the Hapsburg monarchy, however, after fighting on the Eastern Front during the First World War, he was sickened by the War's lethal nationalism and became a fervent anti-militarist. Krleza joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1918, but his opposition to Stalin's artistic dictum of social realism, as well as his refusal to support Stalin's purges, led to his expulsion from the Party in 1939. He nevertheless helped found several literary and political journals, and became a driving force in Yugoslavia's literature. This collection will help readers of all interests and ages see just why Krleza is considered among the best of the literary moderns.

Krleza's epic condemnation of hypocrisy and totalitarianism in pre - World War II Europe; Miroslav Krleza is considered one of the most important Central European authors of the twentieth century. In his career as a poet, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, essayist, journalist, and travel writer he wrote over fifty books. He also suffered condemnation - as a leftist and a practitioner of modernism - and saw his books proscribed in the late 1930s. The first two books of the trilogy The Banquet in Blitva were written in the thirties to comment on political, psychological, artistic, and ethical issues. Such commentary had already earned him the enmity of Yugoslavia's increasingly fascistic government. He wrote and published the third book, together with the previous two, in 1962. Colonel Kristian Barutanski, lord of the mythical Baltic nation of Blitva, has freed his country from foreign oppression and now governs with an iron fist. He is opposed by Niels Nielsen, a melancholy intellectual who hurls invective at the dictator and at the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of society. Barutanski himself despises the sycophants beneath him and recognizes in Nielsen a genuine foe; yet Nielsen, haunted by his own lapses of conscience, struggles to escape both the regime and the role of opposition leader that is thrust upon him. In the end he flees to the neighboring state of Blatvia - and finds his new country as corrupt and as oppressive as the one he previously called home.