Dalkey Archive Press: 193 books

A woman falls into a coma. Perhaps she's going to die. Becoming the sleeper's shadow, the woman's daughter will accompany her mother through six weeks of agony, bearing witness to the prolonged death imposed upon her by the monstrous machine of modern medicine. During this final voyage through the fog,...

Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century French literature, produced a wide variety of essays and fictions that reflect on the complexities of literary work. His description of writing continually returns to a number of themes, such as solitude, passivity,...

A collision between contemporary poetics and the Renaissance lyric, between aestheticism and political engagement, The Master of Insomnia is a collection of Slovenian poet Boris A. Novak's verse from the last fifteen years, including numerous poems never before available in English. In these sensitive...

Perhaps the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the American way of living - from politicians to professors to businessmen to Mom to sexual mores to religion - Generation of Vipers - ranks with the works of De Tocqueville and Emerson in defining the American character and malaise.

In Search of the Grail continues Svetislav Basara?s ?Cyclist Conspiracy,? a fantastical exploration of civilizational decline told through an array of strange and esoteric documents. Readers are introduced to a secret history of the twentieth century, shown that behind the well-known wars and political...

These essayistic short stories, penned over a thirty-year period, follow Fabian, Mihkel Mutt’s strange and self-indulgent alter ego, and his adventures in newly independent Estonia. Mutt’s stories highlight the lingering absurdities of the previous Soviet regime, at the same time taking ironic aim at the triumphs and defeats, the virtues and vices of the Estonian intelligentsia.

Life of a Bishop's Assistant is a "rewritten" biography of the 18th century historical figure, Gavriil Dobrinin. The son of a priest, he became an assistant to a bishop before being fortunate to rise all the way to gubernia procurator. Despite the obscurity of Dobrinin, it is Shklovsky's narration of...

Emil, the unwanted child of two young parents, is adopted by Yoel and Leah, a childless couple. Yet, as the years pass, it becomes clear that Emil doesn't bear much resemblance to the parents who've loved and raised him. Is his name the only thing his real parents have left him? Kin traces the movements...

Theo Fales is a one-time historian turned book editor who specializes in ghostwriting the memoirs of leading American policy-makers. For over twenty-five years, Theo has been helping retired generals and CIA directors justify their decisions in the first-person. One day, however, hearing a song at a...

hen his marriage and career fall apart, a young lawyer sets out on a desperate mission to recapture the promise of his youth. His attempt leaves him stranded between a past he no longer recognizes and a life that’s no longer his, and he soon begins to suspect that the surest path to happiness lies...

Jachym Topol is the most-translated Czech author of his generation, lauded for his imaginative storytelling and his inventive use of language. Melding fiction and documentary, with a dash of black humor on the side, he zeroes in on the agonies and injustices of the totalitarian past, in his own country...

The second volume in Stig Saeterbakken's loosely connected "S Trilogy" Self-Control moves from the dark portrait of codependent marriage featured in the acclaimed Siamese to a world of solitary loneliness and repression. A middle-aged man, Andreas Feldt, feeling that he is unable to communicate...

Now finally collected into a single volume, the Sherbrookes trilogy—Possession, Sherbrookes, and Stillness—is Nicholas Delbanco's most celebrated achievement. Centering upon one New England clan and their estate in southwestern Vermont—a full thousand acres, including the bleak and chilly Big House,...

Mathea Martinsen has never been good at dealing with other people. After a lifetime, her only real accomplishment is her longevity: everyone she reads about in the obituaries has died younger than she is now. Afraid that her life will be over before anyone knows that she lived, Mathea digs out her old...