New Directions: 473 books

After years of underground existence, this brilliant novel is emerging as a classic of visionary writing and still remains Hawkes's only work devoted solely to American life. The Beetle Leg, John Hawkes's second full-length novel, was first published by New Directions in 1951. After years of...

Much admired in Europe, Landolfi has been called "the Italian Kafka"; he is often linked with the Surrealists, and in the intellectual quality of his fantasy there are certain affinities with Borges; but beyond these superficial comparisons, his is a truly unique––and fascinating––art....

"Not since Robert Duncan's Ground Work and before that William Carlos Williams' Paterson has New Directions published a long poem as important as Coming to Jakarta!" —James Laughlin A devastating revelation of violence, exploitation, and corrupt politics, Coming to Jakarta derives...

Only a pataphysician nurtured lovingly on surrealist excess could have come up with The Blue Flowers, Queneau's 1964 novel. At his death in 1976, Raymond Queneau was one of France's most eminent men of letters––novelist, poet, essayist, editor, scientist, mathematician, and, more to the...

New Directions proudly introduces two novels in English by the Norwegian master, who is “without question, Norway’s bravest, most intelligent novelist” (Per Petterson) Armand is a diplomat rising through the ranks of the Norwegian foreign office, but he’s caught between his public duty...

One of Julio Cortázar's great early novels. "Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed."—Pablo Neruda Written in 1950 (just before the fall of Perón's government), Final Exam is Julio Cortázar's bitter and melancholy allegorical farewell to an Argentina from which he would...

Ezra Pound has been called "the inventor of modern poetry in English." The verse and criticism which he produced during the early years of the twentieth century very largely determined the directions of creative writing in our time; virtually every major poet in England and America...

An education in a portmanteau: George Steiner at The New Yorker collects his best work from his more than 150 pieces for the magazine. Between 1967 and 1997, George Steiner wrote more than 130 pieces on a great range of topics for The New Yorker, making new books, difficult ideas, and unfamiliar...

One of the best-loved books by one of the great spiritual authors of our time, with a new introduction by best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd. New Seeds of Contemplation is one of Thomas Merton's most widely read and best-loved books. Christians and non-Christians alike have joined in praising...

"A primer for Big Bad City disillusionment, unsparing in its portrayal of New York's debilitating entropy."—The Village Voice. With a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem. First published in 1933, Miss Lonelyhearts remains one of the most shocking works of 20th century American literature,...

“Denise Levertov fulfills the eternal mission of the true Poet: to be a receptacle of Divine Grace and a 'spendor of that Grace to humanity.'” —World Literature Today Denise Levertov's New & Selected Essays gathers three decades' worth of the poet's most important critical statements....

A new edition of William Carlos Williams’ loving and groundbreaking book about American history, with a new introduction by Rick Moody. Although admired by D. H. Lawrence, this modern classic went generally unnoticed during the years after its publication in 1925. Yet it is “a fundamental...

A new collection from “one of the world’s great essayists” (The New York Times) The Ghosts of Birds offers thirty-five essays by Eliot Weinberger: the first section of the book continues his linked serial-essay, An Elemental Thing, which pulls the reader into “a vortex for the entire...

The collected poems of one of the world's greatest living writers, Tomas Transtromer, available in this comprehensive edition. In day's first hours consciousness can grasp the world as the hand grips a sun-warmed stone. Translated into fifty languages, the poetry of Tomas Transtromer...