Book by Calisher, Hortense

Gonchev, schooled in Japan by disciples of Kurosawa, admits to only one Film. As Director, making movies for a Balkan enclave, he, together with his vast movie lot and sets, is already a legend. He finds himself an honored prisoner, and his grim hosts, including the "Committee," in this unforgettable seriocomic world will not release him to see the great cities of his remarkable imagination. Vuksica, his splendidly loyal wife, once a wanton movie star, plans otherwise. She takes a brigand lover. Gonchev is shanghaied out, not to the Paris of his dreams but to the U.S.A. Taken to be one of our once-adored "dissidents," he is paraded on the college circuit. Accompanied by the touching Roko, his translator and mistress, carrying as talisman a gutted camera, he encounters New York, tours the heartland, then emerges into a California earthquake. He has seen America, from its sad streets to its billionaire countrysides, with his film-loving eye. This is a novel out of the world of Milan Kundera, Heinrich Boll, and Danilo Kis, as international as an airplane, flying beyond the political. Immensely quotable, like Gonchev himself, it has the tenor of a European film, with an opera of characters, all singing for their lives. Once more, Calisher astounds.

This Modern Library collection presents seven novellas that brilliantly showcase the range and depth of the talent of Hortense Calisher, a writer hailed by the Saturday Review as "among the most literate practitioners of modern American fiction, a stylist wholly committed to the exploitation of language." Featured is "Women Men Don't Talk About," a new story, published here for the first time. The novellas are characterized by their unfailing intelligence and by the technical sure-handedness and acuity of the writing. Each has a strong sense of place--New York City, the Hudson Valley, Saratoga Springs--and an eclectic cast of characters who inhabit regions where our most acute hopes, fears, and anxieties coexist. The respectable lawyer of "Tale for the Mirror" attempts to oust an unconventional Hindu healer from his community, only to wonder whether the doctor's trickery is any different from his own. In "The Railway Police," a journey by train occasions a social worker's sudden break with past pretenses and her kafkaesque rebirth as a vagabond. And in "Saratoga, Hot," a sharply observed tale set amid the fabled world of horse racing, a man and woman discover new strength in a love touched by tragedy. Included as well are "Extreme Magic," "The Man Who Spat Silver," and "The Last Trolley Ride." "Calisher hits at her targets at a point more vital than the usual marksman knows to exist," wrote novelist and critic Angus Wilson. And The New York Times Book Review commented, "Seen through her eyes the real world is not prosaic. Placed in lyrical, poetic spaces, it is thick and rich with implication." The Novellas of Hortense Calisher, an edition exclusive to the Modern Library, is a major collection from one of America's finest literary voices. The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

A unique novel of parents and children - and the spaces between them Dr. Niels Berners - a Swiss plastic surgeon living in New York - is struggling to recover from his dysfunctional son's abandonment of him. He joins a group of four other parents, all with absent children either in jail or in jeopardy, to discuss their feelings and seek a sense of community, comfort, and closure. Hortense Calisher artfully strings together tales of healing, brilliantly tracing the shadow of the generational gap. With compassion and precision, she paints the bruised egos of concerned parents confronting very empty nests.

5 1/2"x8 3/8" 248 page cloth hardcover . Publisher-Little, Brown and Company in 1966-Stated First Edition. Two short novels.