Cécile Duffaut is shocked. Almost as much by the words as by the general appearance of the man standing across from her. He seems to be projecting a sort of violence she would never have imagined. Violence but also, oh God, she doesn’t want to admit it, but yes, all the same, never mind if it seems hackneyed, yes, he’s projecting sensuality, the sensuality of 8:15 in the morning, on the platform at the Gare de l’Est, it’s hardly the place for it, after all. There he is, he’s desperate, like a dog about to bite, she has to leave now, she’s right, she knows she is, she has to go. Her brain is teeming with words, snatches of phrases, fragments of images, if she were Valentine, she’d give him her email, digital makes things easier, it leaves a trace and yet at the same time leaves no trace, it’s magical, but now is not the time for magical thinking, get going now, move.
She picks up her bag. She shifts her shoulder so it will hang properly, she smoothes her skirt which had ridden up slightly, she’s not looking at him anymore, she turns around and heads for the exit, she’s searching for something to say, she ought to be able to come up with some ironic quip about fate, misfortune, destiny, something that would hit home, but she can’t find anything, it’s hopeless, she keeps walking, there’s nothing left, it’s incredible how there’s nothing left, it’s a desert, a green desert, the Périgord, the Lot, rocks, oak trees, walnut trees, a river, a river through the Gare de l’Est, what on earth, railway tracks, there’s nothing but railway tracks and the imperturbable voice announcing platforms, arrivals, departures, delays, because oh yes, there are plenty of delays, and sometimes the trains stop altogether, somewhere they are not taking care to keep things going, and that’s not good, not to take care, not good at all.
Then, ever so slowly, she stops. She is next to car number three. She doesn’t turn around. Seen from behind—her shoulders drooping only slightly, her handbag swinging dangerously, her fingers relaxing, she has paused to take a deep breath. Her legs don’t move. She is still facing toward the central hall of the station, and there are hundreds of thighs, elbows, bellies, feet, and hips hurrying past her. She has stopped. She’s not taking care. She is going to turn around. No one knows if it will be a good thing.
OBLIVION BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/oblivion/
ON THE RUN WITH MARY BY JONATHAN BARROW
Shining moments of tender beauty punctuate this story of a youth on the run after escaping from an elite English boarding school. At London’s Euston Station, the narrator meets a talking dachshund named Mary and together they’re off on escapades through posh Mayfair streets and jaunts in a Rolls-Royce. But the youth soon realizes that the seemingly sweet dog is a handful; an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, drug-addicted mess who can’t stay out of pubs or off the dance floor. On the Run with Mary mirrors the horrors and the joys of the terrible 20th century.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/on-the-run-with-mary/
THE LAST WEYNFELDT BY MARTIN SUTER
Adrian Weynfeldt is an art expert in an international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings and antiques. Always correct and well-mannered, he’s given up on love until one night—entirely out of character for him—Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccountable young woman and gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens his buttoned up existence. This refined pageturner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-weynfeldt/
ANIMAL INTERNET BY ALEXANDER PSCHERA
Some 50,000 creatures around the globe—including whales, leopards, flamingoes, bats and snails—are being equipped with digital tracking devices. The data gathered and studied by major scientific institutes about their behavior will warn us about tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but also radically transform our relationship to the natural world. Contrary to pessimistic fears, author Alexander Pschera sees the Internet as creating a historic opportunity for a new dialogue between man and nature.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/animal-internet/
GUYS LIKE ME BY DOMINIQUE FABRE
Dominique Fabre, born in Paris and a lifelong resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift. He’s looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/guys-like/
KILLING AUNTIE BY ANDRZEJ BURSA
A young university student named Jurek, with no particular ambitions or talents, finds himself with nothing to do. After his doting aunt asks the young man to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason other than, perhaps, boredom. This short comedic masterpiece combines elements of Dostoevsky, Sartre, Kafka, and Heller, coming together to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and—just maybe—redemption.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-auntie/
I CALLED HIM NECKTIE BY MILENA MICHIKO FLAšAR
Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents’ home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a salaryman who has lost his job. The two discover in their sadness a common bond. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/called-necktie/
WHO IS MARTHA? BY MARJANA GAPONENKO
In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. This gloriously written tale mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/martha/
ALL BACKS WERE TURNED BY MAREK HLASKO
Two desperate friends—on the edge of the law—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov’s younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov’s business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn’t help that a beautiful German widow is rooming next door. A story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, conveyed in hard-boiled prose reminiscent of Hammett and Chandler.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/backs-turned/
ALEXANDRIAN SUMMER BY YITZHAK GORMEZANO GOREN
This is the story of two Jewish families living their frenzied last days in the doomed cosmopolitan social whirl of Alexandria just before fleeing Egypt for Israel in 1951. The conventions of the Egyptian upper-middle class are laid bare in this dazzling novel, which exposes sexual hypocrisies and portrays a vanished polyglot world of horse racing, seaside promenades and nightclubs.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/alexandrian-summer/
COCAINE BY PITIGRILLI
Paris in the 1920s—dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits … unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine’s dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty and wicked, Pitigrilli’s classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and retains its venom even today.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/cocaine/
KILLING THE SECOND DOG BY MAREK HLASKO
Two down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1950s scam an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, exiled from their native land and adrift in the hot, nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the widow who has enough trouble with her young son to keep her occupied all day. What follows is a story of romance, deception, cruelty and shame. Hlasko’s writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hard-boiled dialogue, in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-the-second-dog/
THE MISSING YEAR OF JUAN SALVATIERRA BY PEDRO MAIRAL
At the age of nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of canvases on which he detailed six decades of life in his village on Argentina’s frontier with Uruguay. After his death, his sons return to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with rolls over two miles long. But an essential roll is missing. A search ensues that illuminates links between art and life, with past family secrets casting their shadows on the present.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-missing-year-of-juan-salvatierra/
THE GOOD LIFE ELSEWHERE BY VLADIMIR LORCHENKOV
The very funny—and very sad—story of a group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts to emigrate from Europe’s most impoverished nation to Italy for work. An Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; and thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the Italian Promised Land. A country where 25 percent of its population works abroad, remittances make up nearly 40 percent of GDP, and alcohol consumption per capita is the world’s highest – Moldova surely has its problems. But, as Lorchenkov vividly shows, it’s also a country whose residents don’t give up easily.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-good-life-elsewhere/
SOME DAY BY SHEMI ZARHIN
On the shores of Israel’s Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Some Day is a gripping family saga, a sensual and emotional feast that plays out over decades. This is an enchanting tale about tragic fates that disrupt families and break our hearts. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/some-day/
FANNY VON ARNSTEIN: DAUGHTER OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT BY HILDE SPIEL
In 1776 Fanny von Arnstein, the daughter of the Jewish master of the royal mint in Berlin, came to Vienna as an 18-year-old bride. She married a financier to the Austro-Hungarian imperial court, and hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted luminaries of the day. Spiel’s elegantly written and carefully researched biography provides a vivid portrait of a passionate woman who advocated for the rights of Jews, and illuminates a central era in European cultural and social history.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/fanny-von-arnstein-daughter-of-the-enlightenment/
To purchase these titles and for more information please visit newvesselpress.com.
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