Simon Pare

The story of the paradoxical relationship of two parents. As he clears out his parents’ house, Philipp, a photographer, comes across an object that has played a major role in his parents’ lives. Herta and Georg made a fine couple when they first met. Their son imagines the early days of their relationship and remembers how his father was forced...

A collection of unique, profound, and witty stories that relate animals’ peculiarities to human attitudes. Animals – Eight Studies for Experts is a collection of short stories in which each story takes a peculiar item about animals that appears, like fables, to shine a spotlight on different aspects of human behaviour—like caterpillars digging their own graves, sharks in need of...

Richly imagined and recounted in vivid prose of extraordinary beauty, Cox – or, The Course of Time is a stunning illustration of Ransmayr’s talent for imbuing a captivating tale with intense metaphorical, indeed metaphysical force. The world’s most powerful man, Qiánlóng, emperor of China, invites the famous eighteenth-century clockmaker Alister Cox to his court in Beijing. There, in the heart...

The English debut of an idiosyncratic narrative voice. “What now?” wonders Asta, a nurse who has returned to Germany after a final assignment in Nicaragua. After over twenty years working for international aid organizations, her services are no longer needed. No one is waiting for her. She has nowhere to go. Even the language has lost its familiarity. She stands...

A fresh translation of the second volume of Max Frisch’s diaries. By the time Swiss author Max Frisch published the second volume of his diaries or sketchbooks, he had achieved international recognition as a writer and dramatist. In this volume, he develops his version of the literary diary as a mosaic of musings on architecture and writing, travelogue, autobiography, and...