Anne Posten

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe.

But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a nonrepresentational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today.

This is the first published biography of the artist. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist's work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint's life—not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her.

One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea.

Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls – Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat – bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources. High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom – the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.

Dostoyevsky's novels provide profound insight into human psychology and the human soul. To write them, he drew inspiration from his own troubled life: an arrest for subversion; a death sentence spared when he was already in front of the firing squad; four years of hard labor in a Siberian prison camp, a spiritual conversion, a constant addiction to gambling, and the loss of two children that left him a deeply broken man. This graphic novel tells the story of Dostoyevsky's life and the ways it shaped his books with bold drawings and entertaining, heartfelt text. 

After a nervous breakdown in 1929, Robert Walser spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in mental asylums. In 1936, Carl Seelig — an admirer who became Walser's friend and eventually his literary executor—began accompanying the great Swiss writer on his daily walks. As they strolled, Walser told stories, shared his daily experiences of the sanatorium, and expressed his opinions about books and art, writing and history. Filled with lively anecdotes and details, Walks with Walser offers the fullest available account of this wonderful writer's inner and outer life.

In clear, unobtrusive prose inspired by interviews Monika Held did with Auschwitz survivors, This Place Holds No Fear paints an emotive picture of life and love governed by trauma. Heiner’s suffering is omnipresent, and Lena’s struggle to hold her own in an imbalanced relationship dominated by his past is deeply moving. His stories are horrific and disturbing, but he cannot survive without them. Slowly, as the years pass, they’re able to a find freedom and a sense of peace they have not known before.

German writer, critic, and theorist Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) is considered by some a mad eccentric and by others a visionary political thinker, but his influence is still felt today. Along with his influential treatise "Glass Architecture" (1914) and his story "Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention" (1910), a selection of his experiments with the short story form appear here for the first time.

It’s fall in Stuttgart, just before Halloween, and thirty-something mothers Judith and Leonie are safely ensconced in their upscale apartments in one of the city’s best neighborhoods. Judith has squeezed her life into the straitjackets of stay-at-home Waldorf motherhood—no TV, no sweets, nature hikes, and, above all, routine—and marriage to staid university professor Klaus. Leonie is proud of her work at a bank and her husband Simon’s career, though she worries that she’s neglecting her young daughters, and that Simon’s work distracts him from his family. Over the course of a few days, Judith and Leonie’s apparently stable, successful lives are thrown into turmoil by the secrets they keep, the pressures they’ve been keeping at bay, and the waves of change lapping at the peaceful shores of their existence.

Despite its great importance and influence on German theater and letters, Dorst's work is still relatively unknown in America. This is particularly ironic given the strong influence of American culture, not to mention the country itself, on both his writing and personal history. At the age of 17, Dorst was conscripted into the German army but was soon captured and sent to an internment camp up the Hudson River. There, he became fascinated by American culture, which has continued to influence his work, particularly the episodic film style of directors like Robert Altman, so American readers have a chance to experience American culture through German eyes. His work has also been linked to such writers a Ionesco, Beckett and Giraudoux. This Beautiful Place is Dorst's only novella and the only work of his currently available in English.