Europa: A Novel

Rome one January afternoon in 1943. A young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. Innocent and naïve, the war is for her little more than a day-dream, until she realizes that her husband might never return.
This is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost - even at the risk of excluding reality.

A literary masterpiece by one of Germany's most renowned contemporary writers.

THE GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2010

"The book's last paragraph, overtly expressing nothing more than the young woman's intention to write a letter, is one of the most moving conclusions I've ever read." Nick Lezard, The Guardian

"What a superb translation. This extraordinary and eloquent novella, a true tour de force, has made me long to find more of Delius's work straightway." Miranda Seymour, author

Germany’s master of wit and irony now for the first time in English.

Hinrich takes his existence at face value. His wife, on the other hand, has always been more interested in the after-life. Or so it seemed. When she dies of a stroke, Hinrich goes through her papers, only to discover a totally different perspective on their marriage. Thus commences, a dazzling intellectual game of shifting realities.
 

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
“This novella deals with the weighty subjects of marriage and death, in an impressively light manner. Shifting realities evolve with a beautiful sense of irony and wit. It is a tone that allows us to reflect –without judgment – on misunderstandings, contradictory perceptions and the transience of life.” Meike Ziervogel

"Inventive and deeply affecting, this remarkable fiction lingers in the mind long after the last page has been turned."  The Independent.

"This is a tale of a marriage gone awry and the potential loneliness of cohabitation ... but Matthias Politycki leavens his grim tale with playful teasing of his reader's expectations." TLS.

"A teasing, testing story that makes you want to revisit and seek out those fascinating fragments you might just have missed." Lancashire Evening Post.

A wildly inventive new collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates that charts the surprising ways in which the world we think we know can unexpectedly reveal its darker contours

The New York Times has hailed Joyce Carol Oates as "a dangerous writer in the best sense of the word, one who takes risks almost obsessively with energy and relish." Black Dahlia & White Rose, a collection of eleven previously uncollected stories, showcases the keen rewards of Oates's relentless brio and invention. In one beautifully honed story after another, Oates explores the menace that lurks at the edges of and intrudes upon even the seemingly safest of lives-and maps with rare emotional acuity the transformational cost of such intrusions.

Unafraid to venture into no-man's-lands both real and surreal, Oates takes readers deep into dangerous territory, from a maximum-security prison-vividly delineating the heartbreaking and unexpected atmosphere of such an institution-to the inner landscapes of two beautiful and mysteriously doomed young women in 1940s Los Angeles: Elizabeth Short, otherwise known as the Black Dahlia, victim of a long-unsolved and particularly brutal murder, and her roommate Norma Jeane Baker, soon to become Marilyn Monroe. Whether exploring the psychological compulsion of the wife of a well-to-do businessman who is ravished by, and elopes with, a lover who is not what he seems or the uneasily duplicitous relationships between young women and their parents, Black Dahlia & White Rose explores the compelling intertwining of dread and desire, the psychic pull and trauma of domestic life, and resonates at every turn with Oates's mordant humor and her trenchant observation.