Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist, holds a position of singular eminence in the world of letters. Among readers and critics familiar with the whole of Sartre's work, it is generally recognized that his earliest novel, La Nausée (first published in 1938), is his finest and most significant. It is unquestionably a key novel of the twentieth century and a landmark in...

A 59-year-old American acquires a new family on a tropical island, while looking back on his "naked history" with his old family and its talent for death

""It's the best one," Clarice Lispector remarked on the occasion of the publication of The Apple in the Dark: "I can't define it, how it is, I can only say that it's much better constructed than the previous ones." A book in three chapters, with three central characters, The Apple in the Dark is in fact highly sculpted, while being chiefly a metaphysical book, and in this stunning new translation, the novel's mysteries and allegories glow with a fresh...

"This is the first presentation in depth of the work of one of the most influential writers of modern France, Jules Supervielle (1884-1960). Up to now, only an occasional selection has appeared in an anthology, and he is still little known to American readers. Yet Supervielle is one of the unique creators of our time. His fables have the clear-eyed, slightly wry vision of the intelligent child. His poems have a Iucidity of language that throws new...

Among the great figures who have led the revolution in poetry William Carlos Williams was unique in his closeness to the center of American life. Over a span of fifty years he worked to achieve an idiom which would reflect the American rhythm, both of speech and living. -- From publisher's description.