Böcker utgivna av New Vessel Press

"A thoughtful, provocative, playful, and truly original exploration of bodily aesthetics and the factors that define them. A wondrous and important book."—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body WorkHow do power and beauty join forces to determine who is considered ugly? What role does that ugliness play in fomenting hatred? Moshtari Hilal, an Afghan-born author and artist who lives in Germany, has written a touching, intimate, and highly political book. Dense body hair, crooked teeth, and big noses: Hilal uses a broad cultural lens to question norms of appearance—ostensibly her own, but in fact everyone's. She writes about beauty salons in Kabul as a backdrop to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Darwin's theory of evolution, Kim Kardashian, and a utopian place in the shadow of her nose. With a profound mix of essay, poetry, her own drawings, and cultural and social history of the body, Hilal explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test. Why are we afraid of ugliness?

"Three Israeli women adjust to life in the United States. In the title story of Arad's latest book, an older Israeli woman reflects on nearly half a century spent in the American Midwest, where she teaches Hebrew at the local (unnamed) university. It's been a quiet life spent scrupulously building up an academic program in Hebrew and Jewish studies. Lately, however, enrollment in Ilana's classes has fallen: "What will happen," she wonders, "if Hebrew ends up like Hindi or Polish, with just a beginners' class offered every two or three years?" Just then, a flashy young professor--also Israeli--is hired, and Ilana is caught off guard: Yoad, with his complicated critiques of Israeli politics, seems intent on undermining not just Ilana's work, but also the comfortable assumptions on which she's based her life. It's a quiet, novella-length story, meticulously observed, with remarkable shades of subtlety and nuance. What could have easily become a political screed is, instead, a gentle inquiry into aging, what it means to be relevant, academic ambition, and, most particularly, the morality of Zionist politics. The other two novellas that make up this volume are just as intricately realized. In A Visit (Scenes), Miriam visits her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Silicon Valley, where she quickly discovers fault lines in her son's apparently stable family. Make New Friends tackles the insipid--and occasionally insidious--world of social media when Efrat tries to help her daughter adjust to middle school life. Each story is marked by the meticulousness of Arad's observations and the depth of her insights. While her stories follow traditional forms, unmuddied by narrative experimentation, the wisdom she culls from them is tremendous. The quiet subtlety of Arad's prose only pulls the strength of her insights into higher relief."--Provided by publisher.

A harrowing, culturally rich memoir.Kirkus ReviewsBuilding upon her celebrated autobiographyDistant Fathers, Italian author Marina Jarre returns to her native Latvia for the first time since she left as a ten-year-old girl in 1935. InReturn to Latviaa masterful collage-like work that is part travelogue, part memoir, part ruminative essayshe looks for traces of her murdered father whom she never bid farewell. Jarre visits the former Jewish ghetto of Riga and its southern forest where tens ofthousands were slaughtered in a 1941 mass execution by Nazi death squads with active participation by Latvian collaborators. Here she attempts to reconcile herself with her past, or at least to heal the wounds of a truncated childhood. Piecing together documents and memories,Return to Latviaexplores immense guilt, repression, and the complicity of Latvians in the massacres of their Jewish neighbors, highlighting vast Holocaust atrocities that occurred outside the confines of death camps and in plain view.

"e;One of those rare biographical novels that bring a whole world to life in a way that lingers in memory."e;-Jay Parini, author of Borges and MeThis absorbing, sensitive novel portrays a famed author in a moment of crisis: an aging Hugo von Hofmannsthal returns to a summer resort outside of Salzburg that he visited as a child. But in the spa town where he once thrilled to the joys of youth, he now feels unproductive and uninspired, adrift in the modern world born after World War One. Over ten days in 1924 in a ramshackle inn that has been renamed the Grand Hotel, Hofmannsthal fruitlessly attempts to complete a play he's long been wrestling with. The writer is plagued by feelings of loneliness and failure that echo in a buzz of inner monologues, imaginary conversations and nostalgic memories of relationships with glittering cultural figures. Palace of Flies conjures up an individual state of distress and disruption at a time of fundamental societal transformation that speaks eloquently to our own age.

"e;Piero Chiara's novel is at once a murder mystery and a lyrical study of desire, greed, and deception. The ending is simply stunning."e;-Andre Aciman, author of Call Me by Your NameSummer 1946. World War Two has just come to an end and there's a yearning for renewal. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small, fashionable port, he meets the enigmatic owner of a nearby villa who invites him home for dinner with his older wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law. The sailor is intrigued by the elegant waterside mansion, staffed with servants and imbued with mystery, and stays in a guest room previously occupied by a now deceased bishop related to his host. The two men form an uneasy bond, recognizing in each other a shared taste for idling and erotic adventure. They soon set sail together, encountering old flames and making new conquests. But tragedy puts an abrupt halt to their revels and shatters the tranquility of the villa. What really happened on the dock? And who was the figure glimpsed cycling around the shore in the dark? A sultry, stylish psychological thriller executed with supreme literary finesse.

A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. Such personal exposure at close range entails a strange and troubling pact between artist and sitter that prompts both to reevaluate their lives. Blondel, author of the hugely popular novel The 6:41 to Paris, evokes an intimacy of dangerous intensity in a tale marked by profound nostalgia and a reckoning with the past that allows its two characters to move ahead in to the future.

A young bride shuts herself up in a bedroom on her wedding day, refusing to get married. In this moving and humorous look at contemporary Israel and the chaotic ups and downs of love everywhere, her family gathers outside the locked door, not knowing what to do. The bride's mother has lost a younger daughter in unclear circumstances. Her grandmother is hard of hearing, yet seems to understand her better than anyone. A male cousin who likes to wear women's clothes and jewelry clings to his grandmother like a little boy. The family tries an array of unusual tactics to ensure the wedding goes ahead, including calling in a psychologist specializing in brides who change their mind and a ladder truck from the Palestinian Authority electrical company. The only communication they receive from behind the door are scribbled notes, one of them a cryptic poem about a prodigal daughter returning home. The harder they try to reach the defiant woman, the more the despairing groom is convinced that her refusal should be respected. But what, exactly, ought to be respected? Is this merely a case of cold feet? A feminist statement? Or a mourning ritual for a lost sister? This provocative and highly entertaining novel lingers long after its final page.

This is Christmas, à la française¿elegant, inviting, delicious, and challenging. Nobody does Christmas like the French.

A new translation of the Italian novelist's cautionary comedy of excess and despair in 1920s Paris';this little romp is always a pleasurable one' (Publishers Weekly). Paris, 1920s. The City of Light is a dizzy and decadent bohemia for Tito Arnaudi, a young Italian medical student turned bon vivant journalist. To escape the moralizing of his Italian hometownor perhaps it was merely a whimTito got on a train to Paris without so much as a letter of introduction. Soon enough, he finds employment inventing lurid scandals and gruesome deaths to newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous than his press reports when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty, and wicked, Pitigrilli's classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and captures the lure of a bygone era even as it charts the comical tragedy of a young man's downfall. The novel's descriptions of sex and drug use prompted church authorities to place Cocaine on a list of forbidden books, while filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote a screenplay based on the tale. Even today, Cocaine retains its venomous bite.