Join us on April 15th, 2016 at the Community Bookstore for a conversation with Man Booker Prize finalist José Eduardo Agualusa and Vanity Fair staff writer Andy Tepper. A General Theory of Oblivion explores Angola's tumultuous late 20th century through the character of Ludo, who watches as 30 years of history unfold from socialism to civil war to capitalism. Agualusa is regarded as a leading voice of Angola, the Portuguese language, and world literature.

Please join New Directions, NYRB Classics, and Archipelago Books for a French Poetry Party on Bastille Day. You’ll find us rejoicing in great, lusty, and revelatory French verse in the courtyard on what we hope will be a hot summer’s night. “Bring glory to the love-drunk folks at home!”—Charles Baudelaire “Love, something crazy comes to mind: I can’t bear being on my best behavior.”—Louise Labé “The only reality is Beauty and its only perfect expression is Poetry. All the rest…

Newcomers, the first volume of Lojze Kovacic’s three-part autobiography, opens in 1938 with the expulsion of the Kovacic family from their Swiss home and their eventual resettlement in Slovenia. Kovacic, writing as a 10-year-old, describes his family’s journey with uncanny naiveté and in a style that is clear, direct and moving. Translator Michael Biggins and Gabriel Sanders join us at Community Bookstore to celebrate the first English-language publication of this pivotal Slovenian epic. Michael Biggins has translated works by a number of Slovenia's…

Peter Wortsman, whose translations of selections of Franz Kafka were just highly praised by the BBC, will be joined by poet Geoffrey O'Brien to discuss the new release and muse on all things literary, artistic, and Kafkaesque at Community Bookstore in Brooklyn October 20th, 2016 at 7 pm.  Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka gathers new translations of stories, journals, and letters by the famous author. Jane Ciabattari of the BBC wrote that Kafka's writings are still “powerfully resonant today,” and she went…

Elsewhere Editions, Archipelago Books' brand-new international children’s imprint, will launch this spring, “devoted to translating imaginative works of children’s literature from all corners of the world.” Ahead of that launch, mastermind editors Jill Schoolman and Kendall Storey offer a special preview of the imprint’s first three titles: Claude Ponti - auteur/illustrateur's My Valley, Roger Mello's You Can’t Be Too Careful!, and Jostein Gaarder's Questions Asked. Join us for this sneak peek of breathtaking children’s books in translation. Following story time,…

Named after Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s own sharp self-description, Vulture in a Cage is the most extensive collection of the 11th century Hebrew poet’s works ever to be published in English. Weighty poems of praise, lament, and complaint sit alongside devotional poetry, love poetry, descriptive meditations on nature, and epigrams. Raymond P. Scheindlin, translator and editor of Vulture in a Cage, will sit down with Judith Baumel, poet, critic, translator and director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University, to discuss the life and work…

Join us Thursday, September 28th at Community Bookstore to hear Donald Nicholson-Smith and Christopher Winks discuss Abdellatif Laâbi and Victor Serge and examine these writers' enduring influence and ability to keep writing under repressive regimes. In Praise of Defeat, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, is the first English-language collection of Abdellatif Laâbi's poetry, spanning six decades of political and literary change, innovation, and struggle from one of the central writers and thinkers in contemporary Maghreb letters. The Russian Victor Serge’s A Blaze in a Desert:…

Join us for a conversation between Norwegian author Hanne Ørstavik and Kerri Arsenault of the National Book Critics Circle about Ørstavik's novel Love. We hope to see you there!

Join us for a conversation and reading with Ida Jessen at Community Bookstore in Park Slope. Ida will present her new novel, A Change of Time.    Ida Jessen is widely considered to be the master of psychological realism in contemporary Danish fiction. Having made her debut with the short-story collection Under Sten (Under Stone) in 1989, Jessen’s breakthrough came with the trilogy: Den der lyver (The One Who’s Lying; 2011), Det første jeg tænker (The First Thing I Think Of; 2006), and Børnene (The Children; 2009). The…