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In The Bill, László Krasznahorkai''s madly lucid voice pours forth in a single, vertiginous, eleven-page sentence addressing Palma Vecchio, a sixteenth-century Venetian painter. Peering out from the pages are Vecchio''s voluptuous, bare-breasted blondes, a succession of models transformed on the canvas into portraits of apprehensive sexuality. Alongside these women, the writer that Susan Sontag called "the Hungarian master of apocalypse" interrogates Vecchio''s gift: Why does he do it? How does he do it? And why are these models so afraid of him even though he, unlike most of his contemporaries, never touches them? The text engages with the art, asking questions only the paintings can answer. "László Krasznahorkai''s taut, almost explosive texts resemble prose poems more than short stories or conventional novella chapters, though they do not pretend to lyricism."--Nation

''One of the most mysterious artists now at work'' Colm Tóibín ''The contemporary master of the apocalypse'' Susan Sontag Under a cold sun blazing in a blinding blue sky, a train pulls away from Urga and out into the Gobi desert, headed for Beijing. Aboard the train sits a traveller who, amid a Dantean spiritual crisis and dogged by questions of the most profound variety, has been compelled to run away to the heart of China. His journey, though finite, resists quantification. His destination proves even harder to define. Available now in English for the first time since its original publication in 1992, Prisoner of Urga is an extraordinary passage through a hellacious paradise of perilous poetry.

A quiet, poetic, and exquisitely gorgeous novel describing a wandering mythic figure in a Kyoto monastery, by the National Book Award winner The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless: a place of prayer and deliverance, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him: “he continually saw the garden in his mind’s eye without being able to touch its existence.” This exquisitely beautiful novel by National Book Award–winner László Krasznahorkai—perhaps his most serene and poetic work—describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite the difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery (described in poetic detail) as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area (the underground layers revealed beneath a bed of moss, the travels of cypress-tree seeds on the wind, feral foxes and stray dogs meandering outside the monastery’s walls), making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being.

Representing a broad range of ethnic diversity, these in-depth profiles present fascinating accounts of lives and careers, the circumstances under which works were produced, and their literary significance. Each profile also includes critical evaluation, a list of the author''s principal works with date first published, a list of major critical works, and a portrait or photograph where available.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2025Human being - astonishing creature - who are you?Delivered in Stockholm in December 2025, Enough About Angels is the extraordinary Nobel Lecture from László Krasznahorkai. Characteristically brilliant and unforgettable, it is a message about hope, compassion, the force of humanity and how, from our degraded current epoch, destruction might emerge - or rebellion. ''A compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art'' Nobel Prize JudgesTRANSLATED BY OTTILIE MULZET

A joyful ode--in a single soaring, crazy sentence--to the interconnectedness of great (and mad) minds