Born in Prague when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and recognized today as a master of verse, poet Rainer Maria Rilke was considerably less well known in 1902 when he received a heartfelt letter from an aspiring poet. A 19-year-old student sent Rilke some of his verses, seeking an opinion of their worth. Rilke declined to offer a critique, instead encouraging the student to rely upon his own inner judgment: "Nobody can advise and help...

From Jonathan Franzen, bestselling author of The Corrections and Crossroads, comes his razor-sharp translation of Frank Wedekind's major modern play, Spring Awakening. Featuring an introduction by Franzen. First performed in Germany in 1906, Frank Wedekind's controversial play Spring Awakening closed after one night in New York in 1917 amid charges of obscenity and public outrage. For the better part of the twentieth century Wedekind's intense body...

"Glamour, treachery, and espionage collide when an English socialite rushes to save her sister from the Nazis. As the daughter of Sir Alfred Whitford, Kat has a certain set of responsibilities. But chasing her wayward sister, Ellie, to Nazi-occupied Paris was never supposed to be one of them. Now accustomed to the luxurious lifestyle that her Nazi boyfriend provides, Ellie has no intention of going back to the shackled life their parents dictate for...

"Fresne Prison, 1940: A former maid at a luxury villa on the Riviera, Margot Bisset finds herself in a prison cell with writer and French Resistance fighter Joséphine Murant. Together, they are transferred to a work camp in Germany for four years, where the secrets they share will bind them for generations to come... Paris, around about now: Evie Black lives in Paris with her teenage son, Hugo, above her botanical bookshop, La Maison Rustique. Life...

In January 1943, the Gestapo hunted down 230 women of the French Resistance and sent them to Auschwitz. This is their story, told in full for the first time--a searing and unforgettable chronicle of terror, courage, defiance, survival, and the power of friendship to transcend evil that is an essential addition to the history of World War II.

Learn to speak in German about the things that matter to you. Massively improve your German vocabulary and speaking skills through reading about these 32 everyday topics. Who is it for? If you are a high beginner with a good understanding of basic grammar and vocabulary then this is the book to help you to take your German to the next level. How does it work? Each article covers a topic that you would commonly talk about in your own language. So...

First published in Germany in 1901 and translated into English in 1924, Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks" is the story of the decline of a wealthy German family over four generations which takes place in the years 1835 to 1877. Mann began writing the novel, his first, when he was only twenty-two years old and based much of his critically acclaimed work on the story of his own family and their peers. Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929...

Edward Snow's selection of more than one hundred of Rainer Maria Rilke's little-known and neglected poems in this bilingual edition offers the reader a glimpse into one of the most powerful and underrated accomplishments in all of modern poetry. The poems in Uncollected Poems reveal a freer, more dangerous, less self-fashioning Rilke than the poet of the Elegies and the Sonnets; and Snow's translations of them, while always scrupulously faithful to...

The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt" When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin, he was twenty-seven and already the author of nine books of poems. His early work had been accomplished, but belonged tonally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic. Paris...

Heinrich von Kleists 1808 erschienenes Trauerspiel "Penthesilea" bearbeitet einen Stoff aus der griechischen Mythologie: das tödliche Zusammentreffen zwischen dem Griechenhelden Achilles und der Amazonenkönigin Penthesilea auf dem Schlachtfeld vor Troja. Kleists grausames Drama bildet ein Gegengewicht zu den idealisierenden Antikevorstellungen seiner Zeit und wurde nach seinem Erscheinen heftig kritisiert und abgelehnt. Mit seinen 24 Auftritten...