NYRB Publishing

And "Mr Fortune's Maggot", though they called it "Mr Fortune" (I think they appended another related short story?).

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0726/9203/products/Memories_from_Moscow_to_the_Black_Sea_2048x2048.jpg?v=1460057487

EMORIES
FROM MOSCOW TO THE BLACK SEA
by Teffi, a new translation from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler, Irina Steinberg, and Anne Marie Jackson, introduction by Edythe Haber

$11.87 $16.95
(30% off)
Available as E-BookBiography & MemoirInternational LiteratureRussian Literature
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An NYRB Classics Original

Considered Teffi’s single greatest work, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is a deeply personal account of the author’s last months in Russia and Ukraine, suffused with her acute awareness of the political currents churning around her, many of which have now resurfaced.

In 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Teffi, whose stories and journalism had made her a celebrity in Moscow, was invited to read from her work in Ukraine. She accepted the invitation eagerly, though she had every intention of returning home. As it happened, her trip ended four years later in Paris, where she would spend the rest of her life in exile. None of this was foreseeable when she arrived in German-occupied Kiev to discover a hotbed of artistic energy and experimentation. When Kiev fell several months later to Ukrainian nationalists, Teffi fled south to Odessa, then on to the port of Novorossiysk, from which she embarked at last for Constantinople. Danger and death threaten throughout Memories, even as the book displays the brilliant style, keen eye, comic gift, and deep feeling that have made Teffi one of the most beloved of twentieth-century Russian writers.
PRAISE

I never imagined such a memoir could be possible, especially about the Russian Civil War. Teffi wears her wisdom lightly, observing farce and foible amid the looming tragedy, in this enthralling book.
—Antony Beevor

Teffi demonstrates a profound sympathy for the ordinary people among whom she counts herself, swept along by cataclysmic events. While she sympathises with those who cannot help themselves, she is not afraid to look into the depths of what human beings can do to one another and what happens when civilisation breaks down.
—Virginia Rounding, Financial Times

The book is expertly and collectively translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg. It reads extremely easily and well in English and is furnished with an introduction, translators’ afterword and copious notes to explain references and allusions now lost to time.
—William Boyd, Sunday Times

Memories is an astonishing work that, like Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don, and for many of the same reasons, deserves to be turned into a film. It is both a thriller and an unforgettably personal account of one of the worst periods in Russian history.
—Catherine Brown, Literary Review

An] astonishingly vivid memoir...Wittily, wryly, wistfully, but never self-indulgently, Teffi tells the story of her escape from Moscow to Kiev to Odessa and onto a dodgy boat to cross the Black Sea as the country she loves is turned upside down in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution.
—Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Country Life

A vividly idiosyncratic personal account of the disintegration - moral, political, strategic - of Tsarist Russia after the Revolution, as alive to the farcical and the ridiculous as it is to the tragic; a bit like what Chekhov might have written if he had lived to experience it.
—Michael Frayn

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TOLSTOY, RASPUTIN, OTHERS, AND ME
THE BEST OF TEFFI
by Teffi, a new translation from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Rose France, and Anne Marie Jackson

$10.47 $14.95
(30% off)
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Early in her literary career Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, born in St. Petersburg in 1872, adopted the pen-name of Teffi, and it is as Teffi that she is remembered. In prerevolutionary Russia she was a literary star, known for her humorous satirical pieces; in the 1920s and 30s, she wrote some of her finest stories in exile in Paris, recalling her unforgettable encounters with Rasputin, and her hopeful visit at age thirteen to Tolstoy after reading War and Peace. In this selection of her best autobiographical stories, she covers a wide range of subjects, from family life to revolution and emigration, writers and writing.

Like Nabokov, Platonov, and other great Russian prose writers, Teffi was a poet who turned to prose but continued to write with a poet’s sensitivity to tone and rhythm. Like Chekhov, she fuses wit, tragedy, and a remarkable capacity for observation; there are few human weaknesses she did not relate to with compassion and understanding.

PRAISE

Nearly all her portraits – both of ‘famous historical figures’ and of ordinary people – are sharp and vivid. There is only one person in Teffi’s autobiographical prose who we are not really allowed to see. This is Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, carefully concealed by her witty, observant and humane alter ego –Teffi.
—Masha Karp, The World Today

Teffi is an inimitable presence in Russian literature, a genuine wonder.
—Georgy Ivanov

Teffi can write in more registers than you might think, and is capable of being heartbreaking as well as very funny. I wish she were still alive, and I could have met her. But then I realised she would have seen right through me. I can’t recommend her strongly enough.
—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

Haven't read that one, but based on the collection of her stuff that came out last year from Pushkin Press, 'Subtly Worded', it would be well worth getting

Summer Sale

40% off 44 titles

http://www.nyrb.com/pages/nyrb-summer-sale

New translation of Walser collection:
https://www.nyrb.com/collections/robert-walser/products/girlfriends-ghosts-and-other-stories?variant=16505116615&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Walser%20and%20Alas&utm_content=Walser%20and%20Alas+CID_3a5bfad4ae3496f1065199041ecfcf36&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=READ%20MORE

Ditto Leopoldo Alas:
https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/products/his-only-son?variant=19019678471&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Walser%20and%20Alas&utm_content=Walser%20and%20Alas+CID_3a5bfad4ae3496f1065199041ecfcf36&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=READ%20MORE

Also wondering about this one:

The English biographer, naturalist, philosopher and convivial wit John Aubrey (1626-97) did not leave a diary behind, to the dismay of those who admire his writing about other people. In an ingenious new book titled “John Aubrey: My Own Life,” the historian Ruth Scurr has made one for him, and it is a thoroughgoing delight. Ms. Scurr has rummaged through Aubrey’s letters, books and unpublished manuscripts. She has isolated his writing about his own life and set it in chronological order, modernizing spellings and adding discreet commentary when necessary...She has done the world a service in compiling “John Aubrey: My Own Life.” This is a funny book, and a wise and moving one, that delivers to us a man in full.
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

quoted here:
http://www.nyrb.com/products/john-aubrey-my-life?variant=16330445255&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Ruth%20Scurr%202&utm_content=Ruth%20Scurr%202+CID_f57492bfc3db8da5e050bf3840e94475&

That come out last year in the UK, was raved about everywhere

Got my eye on Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto: proto-Bolano. I certainly need it.

That does look good, came across this article last week:

An Argentinian Novelist, Out of Oblivion

tx, gd rev

Zama is very much worth your time

http://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/the-invisibility-cloak

The Ge Fei'll be their first work by a living Chinese writer, right?

An art/comics-world friend who's never read any NYRB titles has been raving about the selections in the NYR Comics series, but haven't seen anything in the shops down my way.

The Invisibility Cloak looks promising. I read one other Ge Fei book, https://penguin.com.au/books/flock-of-brown-birds-9780734399601
Which seemed a bit hackneyed in its postmodernism, but it was originally from the 1980s, and apparently it was a big deal in Chinese lit at the time

On the Aubrey book, the LRB was a bit sceptical - sounds like there's a lot of silent prose-tidying.

hey--does anyone know a place in brooklyn, say, in the cobble hill or boerum hill area, where i can find these books?

Benjamin Kunkel reviews Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto. sounds great http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/a-neglected-south-american-masterpiece

Such a beautiful review (also Coetzee writes an OK rev in the NYRB). Its great to see that Esther Allen is working on more translations and there is also a film of it to be released later this year apparently.

The Calligrams series...haven't bought anything from this however Francois Chang's study looks like a good primer.

50 books, 50% off, ends Feb. 28: https://www.nyrb.com/collections/winter-sale?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYRB%20Winter%20Sale&utm_content=NYRB%20Winter%20Sale+CID_62abd110455780fc39975d10d373b003&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Shop%20now

hmm, will prob get Red Shift, Platonov, Rosenkrantz (i LOVE dialogue) and the J.R. Ackerley (i read We Think The World Of You last year)

if anyone says nice things about any of the other books I am easily convinced :)

Haven't read it since my smoggy early twenties, but Growing Up Absurd brought some focus (no small feat at the time).

huh, can't believe I've never heard of this guy! added to the pile

Ordering Chocky and Human Comedy, plus Pinocchio for my kid. Was tempted by Red Shift and Growing Up Absurd as well...

if i weren't broke i would be all over the two walser volumes!

re: goodman, not published by nyrb but his series of novels published together as empire city is quite interesting and feeds into his philosophical writings.

Oh yeah, and he co-authored the groundbreaking Gestalt Therapy, which I thought useful (also in my twenties). He was also kind of Chomsky before (well-known) Chomsky, lefto-anarchist-wise, but with more range. This is weirdly "organized", but works more info into the eventual rehash:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Goodman

ha, as it happens i think the first book of goodman's i read included an attack on chomsky's linguistic theories!

said on said book: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/03/specials/said-goodman.html

might get the Arlt, too. i'm a sucker for proto-Cortazar gods of Argentine lit with hyperbolic quotes by contemporary Lat Am writers (Bolano: "Let's say, modestly, that Arlt is Jesus Christ")

Yeah, that arlt is calling to me

man, with shipping i only save like 5$ vs going downtown to buy these brick-and-mortar >:(

I scored a 2nd hand copy of the Valle-Inclan today.

Agostino is fantastic.

Yeah, shipping for me was more than cost of books, so much for that

Agree re agostino

Both those Walsers, right?

Yes, get any and all walsers

the Calligrams series...haven't bought anything from this however Francois Chang's study looks like a good primer.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, February 4, 2017 2:59 PM (two weeks ago)

Yeah, the Francois Cheng looks fantastic; think I'll grab that & Hawkes' A Little Primer of Tu Fu when the former's released next month. In a similar vein, New Directions reissued Eliot Weinberger's Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei late last year.

NYRB Classics‏Verified account @nyrbclassics 14m14 minutes ago
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The final two Henry Green novels we’ll be publishing feature original art by Amy Sillman. https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming (lotta goodies)

don't see it listed there, but they're also putting out leonora carrington's down below which hasn't been available since the eighties (as far as i know)

https://www.nyrb.com/products/typewriters-bombs-jellyfish

does anyone know if and if so where the essay on Delilo mentioned above was published? and if it's possible to find online? *bats eyelashes*

quick google says it's the one titled 'nothing will have taken place except the place,' and it may have started as a lecture and/or a traveling exhibition, but i don't see any publication info.

We’re pleased to announce that Ian Buruma has been named editor of The New York Review of Books https://t.co/ImtnNnW9Vt

— NY Review of Books (@nybooks) May 18, 2017

cool.

Ugh

Huh, I guess I just thought they'd carry on, spreading responsibilities among the junior editors, or promoting from within. This is a surprise. I like Buruma's articles, so color me cautiously optimistic.

I really should buy the nyrb DUD AVOCADO.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/26/dud-avocado-elaine-dundy-rereading

It's very good.

The Virago edition of The Dud Avocado was widely remaindered; think it lacks the new afterword by Dundy that's in the NYRB edition, but might otherwise be the cheaper option.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I read and enjoyed The Dud Av quite recently myself. It was interesting then going on to read Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time - both books published in the same year, w/ superficially similar lead characters. The retrospective structure of B at T's perfectly suits Capote's melancholy cast of mind - but Dundy's book is funnier, more sympathetic to her heroine, and quite a lot less racist too (tho it is not wholly unblemished in that regard.)

End of 2017: Melville by Jean Giono, Chateubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, Tsvetaeva's Earthly Signs, maybe Hardwick's essays.

2018 is looking very strong:

Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries is going to be published next year.

Also, just as excitingly, we'll have Shamalov's Kolyma Tales. I've read the previous translation, hoping there will be more.

And poetry by Alvaro Mutis.

Anniversaries looks great; I'll probably buy it immediately and then take 8 years to get around to it

Are these different Kolyma Tales to the current Penguin edition? Or a whole new set to get spiritually destroyed by?

It's a different translator so bound to be some diffs. I asked NYRB via twitter with no reply.

I think that such greatness came out of so much pain is uplifting to me.

Wanted to read Anniversaries for a while so really happy to see this. Another year to wait but I see there is some available Johnson in English so might chase.

Chateubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave
Think this is the one by C. quoted by Proust (and noted by Vintage Deluxe translator as important influence on P.) in Finding Time Again---intriguing if high-flown quote, is the book good?