Michael Hofmann

"A collection of essays on poetry and translation from literary critic Michael Hofmann"-- Provided by publisher.

A seemingly ordinary man, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning only to discover that he has been transformed into a gigantic insect and must deal with the depression over his new physical alteration, as well as the rejection of his family, in a new translation honoring the 125th anniversary of the author's birth.

Alexander is torn between two very different women. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man could want: intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious. But when the seven-year itch sets in, Alexander soon finds himself rekindling an affair with his college lover, Ivona. The young Polish woman who worked in a Catholic mission is the polar opposite of Sonia: dull, passive, taciturn, and plain. Despite having little in common with Ivona,...

"Werner Herzog, one of the most revered filmmakers of all time, in his first book in many years, tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who continued to defend a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War Two In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts there asked, whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically...

On a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor's visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, a great yearning takes hold of him--but who can tell if it is homesickness or wanderlust; a death-wish or a fresh lease on life? Andreas leaves everything behind--sells his Paris apartment, cuts off all social ties, quits his teaching job, and waves good-bye to his days spent idly sitting in cafés--to look for a woman he loved half a...

"Given a second chance with an old love, a coolly detached archivist questions the life he could have had, and whether it's not too late to live it. A poignant, ingeniously constructed new novel from "one of Europe's most exciting writers" (New York Times Book Review). Forty years ago-almost a lifetime-he confessed his love to a classmate and close friend, Franziska. Now, living in his late mother's house with the obsolete archive of the newspaper...

"Alexander Herzog, a young writer, goes to Vienna to escape his debts and a failed love affair. There he is pursued by book-loving Ganna: giddy, girlish, clumsy, eccentric, and wild. Dazzled and unnerved by her devotion to him, and attracted to the large dowry offered by her wealthy father, he thinks he can mold Ganna into what he wants. But no one can control her troubling passions. As their marriage starts to self-destruct, Herzog will discover...

"The last novel from the acclaimed author of The Artificial Silk Girl, this 1950 classic paints a delightfully shrewd portrait of postwar German society. Upon his release from a prisoner-of-war camp, Ferdinand Timpe returns somewhat uneasily to civilian life in Cologne. Having survived against the odds, he is now faced with a very different sort of dilemma: How to get rid of his fiancée? Although he certainly doesn't love the mild-mannered Luise,...

Karl Rossman has been banished by his parents to America, following a family scandal. There, with unquenchable optimism, he throws himself into the strange experiences that lie before him as he slowly makes his way into the interior of the great continent. Although Kafka's first novel (begun in 1911 and never finished), can be read as a menacing allegory of modern life, it is also infused with a quite un-Kafkaesque blitheness and sunniness, brought...