Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But it wasn't always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book. . . . Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).

Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he s still alive. But it wasn t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book. . . . Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of extraordinary depth and beauty (Newsday)."

CHOSEN AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE OBSERVER, NEW YORKER, NEW YORK TIMES BOOKS REVIEW, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND THE TIMES

'Lucid and exhilarating . A great gift' New York Review of Books

'Tantalizes and compels ... A welcome reminder of how a novel can be defiantly and brilliantly novel' Douglas Kennedy, New Statesman

Jules Epstein has vanished: first slowly, then all at once. He begins divesting himself of all of his worldly possessions. Now he's fallen off the face of the earth, and all the search parties can find is his empty monogrammed briefcase, abandoned in the Judean foothills.

In her room at the Tel Aviv Hilton, an American novelist has also left home to undergo a transformation. But when a stranger recruits her for a project involving Kafka, she is drawn into a mystery that will take her on a metaphysical journey and change her in ways she could never have imagined.

WINNER OF THE 2022 WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES, ESQUIRE, O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, TIME MAGAZINE, LITHUB AND BUSTLE 'Superb' New York Times 'Masterful ... Supremely intelligent' Guardian 'Dazzling ... A marvel' Mail on Sunday Deftly weaving from one end of life to another - from ageing parents to newborn babies, from a young girl's coming-of-age to an old woman's unexpected delivery of a strange new second youth, from mystery and wonder at a life at its close or at a future waiting to unfold, Nicole Krauss's stories illuminate the moments in the lives of women in which the forces of sex, power and violence collide. Beautiful, taut and dark, spinning across the world, from Switzerland, Japan and New York to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and South America, To Be a Man fearlessly delves into questions of masculinity and violence, regret and regeneration, control and desire. 'How much do we really know ourselves and each other? These questions linger long after the final pages of this supremely intelligent collection' Aminatta Forna, Guardian

In this playfully designed dual-language edition, Rachel Shihor's stories-published here for the first time in the original Hebrew-appear alongside Ornan Rotem's English translation. Shihor offers a medley of aphorisms, flash fiction, and short stories, carving out a slice of a world in which Kafka would feel at home. The characters that inhabit this world-reckless she-goats, morose fish, somnambulistic theologians, and poignant old ladies, not to mention dying dictators and dead poets-have nothing in common save for the fact that they instruct us on the human condition. In her introduction, Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love, confirms, "Only a master could make such originality feel inevitable. The only question is why so few people have had the chance to read her." These edifying stories, with all their sadness and humor, are a writer's tour de force and a reader's delight.

Deftly weaving from one end of life to another - from ageing parents to newborn babies, from a young girl's coming-of-age to an old woman's unexpected delivery of a strange new second youth, from mystery and wonder at a life at its close or at a future waiting to unfold, Nicole Krauss's stories illuminate the moments in the lives of women in which the forces of sex, power and violence collide. With sons and lovers, seducers and friends, husbands lost and regained, or husbands who were never husbands at all, how many men does can a woman's lifetime hold? What does it mean to be a man and a woman together; or a man and a woman, once together and now apart? Beautiful, taut and dark, spinning across the world, from Switzerland, Japan and New York to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and South America, To Be a Man delves with originality and timeliness into questions of masculinity and violence, regret and regeneration, control and desire; and shines a fierce, unwavering light onto men and women, and into the uncharted gulfs that lie between them.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, The History of Love explores the lasting power of the written word and the lasting power of love. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'When I was born my mother named me after every girl in a book my father gave her called The History of Love. . . ' Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . . 'Wonderfully affecting...brilliant, touching and remarkably poised' Sunday Telegraph 'A tender tribute to human valiance. Who could be unmoved by a cast of characters whose daily battles are etched on out mind in such diamond-cut prose?' Independent on Sunday 'Devastating...one of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one's breath away' Spectator

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, The History of Love by bestselling author Nicole Krauss explores the lasting power of the written word and the lasting power of love. 'When I was born my mother named me after every girl in a book my father gave her called The History of Love. . . ' Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . . 'Wonderfully affecting...brilliant, touching and remarkably poised' Sunday Telegraph 'A tender tribute to human valiance. Who could be unmoved by a cast of characters whose daily battles are etched on out mind in such diamond-cut prose?' Independent on Sunday 'Devastating...one of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one's breath away' Spectator Nicole Krauss is an American bestselling author who has received international critical acclaim for her first three novels: Great House (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011), The History of Love and Man Walks into a Room (shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award), all of which are available in Penguin paperback.

For twenty-five years, a reclusive American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a young Chilean poet who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet s secret police; one day a girl claiming to be the poet s daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer s life reeling. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer slowly reassembles his father s study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944. Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared. Great House is a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children and how do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change?Nicole Krauss has written a soaring, powerful novel about memory struggling to create a meaningful permanence in the face of inevitable loss. "This is a novel about the long journey of a magnificent desk as it travels through the twentieth century from one owner to the next. It is also a novel about love, exile, the defilements of war, and the restorative power of language." National Book Award citation

A trio of short works by the Nobel laureate and "greatest writer of American prose of the twentieth century" (James Wood, "The New Republic")

While Saul Bellow is known best for his longer fiction in award-winning novels such as "The Adventures of Augie March" and "Herzog," "Something to Remember Me By" will draw new readers to Bellow as it showcases his extraordinary gift for creating memorable characters within a smaller canvas.

The loss of a ring in "A Theft" helps an oft-married woman understand her own wisdom and capacity for love. In "The Bellarosa Connection," Harry Fonstein has escaped from Nazi brutality with the help of an underground organization masterminded by the legendary Broadway impresario Billy Rose, and his story continues in America . In the title story, seventeen-year-old Louie--whose mother is dying of cancer--strays far from home and finds not solace but humiliation and, ultimately, the blessing of his father's wrath.

A luminous and unforgettable first novel by an astonishing new voice in fiction, hailed by Esquire magazine as “one of America’s best young writers.”

Samson Greene, a young and popular professor at Columbia, is found wandering in the Nevada desert. When his wife, Anna, comes to bring him home, she finds a man who remembers nothing, not even his own name. The removal of a small brain tumor saves his life, but his memories beyond the age of twelve are permanently lost.

Here is the story of a keenly intelligent, sensitive man returned to a life in which everything is strange and new. An emigrant from his own life, set free from all that once defined him, Samson Greene believes he has nothing left to lose. So, when a charismatic scientist asks him to participate in a bold experiment, he agrees. Launched into a turbulent journey that takes him to the furthest extremes of solitude and intimacy, what he gains is nothing short of the revelation of what it means to be human.

Award-winning American novelist Nicole Krauss first captivated readers with her groundbreaking debut novel Man Walks into a Room, a novel in which Krauss explores what it is to lose one's identity and what it is to discover what makes us human. Samson Greene has been missing for eight days when he is discovered wandering through the Nevada desert, 'ragged as a crow' and with no idea who he is. He is rushed to hospital where doctors save his life, but all his memories after the age of twelve have been permanently lost. Now, as he looks around the beautiful apartment he apparently shares with his wife and which is filed with all the souvenirs of a life well lived, Samson feels nothing more than a vague admiration. In her first novel Nicole Krauss tells the story of a man suddenly liberated from the life he has made, disconnected from the people who have defined him. Withdrawing from a wife he has no memory of loving, Samson plunges weightless into the future. But when he agrees to participate in a revolutionary experiment, what he experiences a revelation of what it means to be human. 'Krauss celebrates the anything-but-simple art of human connection' San Francisco Chronicle 'You'll savour the last page - and be hungry for future work from this talented author' The Washington Post Book World Nicole Krauss is an American bestselling author who has received international critical acclaim for her first three novels: Great House (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011), The History of Love (Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger) and Man Walks into a Room all of which are available in Penguin paperback.