Ewald Osers

Ivan Klíma

Unable to earn a living as an author because his manuscripts are banned by the state, a Czech writer joins a street-sweeping gang in Prague, a job that leads to encounters with his eccentric crew and painful memoirs of the past

Love and Garbage

Works selected from twenty-five poets from the Balkan regions, based on volumes published in the late 20th century.

Contemporary Macedonian Poetry

Vítězslav Nezval

Czech writer Vitezslav Nezval (1900-58) was one of the leading Surrealist poets of the 20th century. "Prague with Fingers of Rain" is his classic 1936 collection in which Prague's many-sided life - its glamorous history, various weathers, different kinds of people - becomes symbolic of what is contradictory and paradoxical in life itself. Mixing real and surreal, Nezval evokes life's contradictoriness in a series of psalm-like poems of puzzled love and generous humanity. Nezval was perhaps the most prolific writer in Prague during the 1920s and 30s. An original member of the avant-garde group of artists Devetsil ("Butterbur", literally: "Nine Forces"), he was a founding figure of the Poetist movement. His numerous books included poetry collections, experimental plays and novels, memoirs, essays and translations. His best work is from the interwar period. Along with Karel Teige, Jindrich Aetyrsku, and Toyen, Nezval frequently travelled to Paris, engaging with the French surrealists. Forging a friendship with Andre Breton and Paul Aeluard, he was instrumental in founding The Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia in 1934 (the first such group outside of France), serving as editor of the group's journal Surrealismus. His mastery of language and prosody was unparalleled - contemporaries referred to it as wizardry. Alongside with surrealist poetry, he wrote poems that sounded like genuine folksongs and for some time he teased the Czech literary public by the anonymous publication of three books attributed to a fictitious Robert David - one of 52 Villonesque ballades, another of 100 sonnets, all in strict classical form. His identity was guessed by the critics only because 'no one else would be able to do that'. This selection from his seminal collection has a specially commissioned foreword by Ivan Klima.

Prague with Fingers of Rain

Paul Carell

Hitler moves east

Hitler's War on Russia

Poems

Arrive where We Started

Joachim C. Fest

Alexandra Dring

A portrait of Germany's World War II Armaments Minister considers his rise from unemployed architect to designer of the Third Reich's most important buildings, personal relationship with Hitler, and considerable ambition. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Ewald Osers

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