An old man, a shoemaker who once wore a pince-nez and carried a stick with a silver mounting because he wanted to look like a composer, tells the story of his life to six youn, beautiful women basking in the sun. One drunken thought triggers another. Amorous conquests alternate with sundry mishaps and in the exuberant telling acquire the same weight and substance as earth-shattering events. To say nothing of the historical perspective, which the self-styled "engineer of human feet" bends at random to suit his mood. Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age displays the inimitable Czech master at his playful best.

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: A Novel

Hrabal, Bohumil

Heim, Michael Henry

Literature & Fiction

Harcourt

A grandiose old shoemaker tells his story to a circle of young women basking in the sun, a tale of amorous conquests and drunken misadventures

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: A Novel (Harvest Book)

Miroslav Blam walks through the empty streets of Novi Sad, remembering. The war has ended, but for Blam the town is haunted with its presence, and memories of its dead: Aaron Grün, the hunchbacked watchmaker; Eduard Fiker, a lamp merchant; Jakob Mentele, a stove fitter; Arthur Spitzer, a grocer who played amateur soccer and had non-Jewish friends; and Sándor Vértes, a communist lawyer. They stand before him as ever, but they are only the ghosts in Blam's mind. Accompanying the others are Blam's family and his best friend, all of whom perished in the infamous Novi Sad raid in January 1942. Blam lives. He seeks no revenge, no retribution. His life is a spectator's-made all the more agonizing by the clarity with which he sees the events around him. The silhouettes of the dead pass before him, and he incorporates what would have been their daily lives into his own. And in telling the story of one man's life after the war, Ti

The Book of Blam

Tisma, Aleksandar

Contemporary

Mariner Books

Letters of Anton Chekhov

Harper and Row

Prague Tales ia a collection of Jan Neruda's intimate, wry, and bitter-sweet stories of life among the inhabitants of the Little Quarter of nineteenth-century Prague. These finely tuned and varied vignettes established Neruda as the quintessential Czech realist--considered by many to be the Charles Dickens of nineteenth-century Czechoslovakia. Through Neruda's writings, the reader can fully appreciate Prague's ever increasing awareness of itself as a Czech, rather than an Austrian city. Prague Tales is a classic collection by a writer whose influence hass been acknowledged by generations of writers, including Capek, Kafka, Kundera, Skvorecky, and Ivan Klima, one of the most well-known and highly regarded contemporary Czech writers, who has contributed an Introduction to this new translation.

Prague Tales (Central European Classics)

Neruda, Jan

Reference

Oxford University Press

When Michael Henry Heim—one of the most respected translators of his generation—passed away in the fall of 2012, he left behind an astounding legacy. Over his career, he translated over sixty works from more than eight different languages, including books by Milan Kundera, Dubravka Ugresic, Hugo Claus, and Anton Chekov.
But Mike, as he was known to his legion of friends, was much more than that. His classes at UCLA on translation inspired a new generation of translators, and his work altering the way translation is viewed in the university will impact the livelihood of translators for decades to come.
If that weren't enough, upon his death it was revealed that Heim was the anonymous donor responsible for the PEN Translation Fund—the largest fund in America supporting up-and-coming translators.
Hundreds of people in the literary community were impacted by Heim's life and actions, and this book is a small way of honoring this quiet, humble man who, among many other things, is responsible for the title The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and all its variants) entering the English idiom.
Comprising a number of different sections—a short autobiography, pieces from authors he worked with, essays detailing his impact on literary culture—The Man Between opens a window onto the life and teachings of Michael Henry Heim, and, similar to David Bellos's Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, will be of great interest to anyone interested in language, international culture, and the art of translation.
Esther Allen translates from Spanish and French and has worked to promote a culture of translation in the English-speaking world, most notably by directing the PEN Translation Fund from 2003 to 2010 and helping launch the PEN World Voices Festival.
Sean Cotter teaches at the University of Texas at Dallas and translates Romanian poetry and fiction, including Nichita Stanescu's Wheel with a Single Spoke for which he received the 2013 Best Translated Book Award.
Russell Scott Valentino is the current president of the American Literary Translators Association. He is also a professor at Indiana University, a translator, and the founder of Autumn Hill Books. He previously ran the Iowa Review.

The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim and a Life in Translation

Essays & Correspondence

Open Letter

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