Fitzcarraldo Editions

“A nimble case for pretentiousness as a willingness to take risks.” —The New York Times Book ReviewPretentiousness is for anyone who has braved being different, whether that’s making a stand against artistic consensus or running the gauntlet of the last bus home dressed differently from everyone else. Pretentiousness is an essential ingredient in pop music and high art. Why do we choose accusations of elitism over open-mindedness? What do our anxieties about “pretending” say about us?“Fox also cites the work of George Orwell and Susan Sontag repeatedly, and in this book he has written an intellectually rigorous study of culture that echoes the scope of their work. His argument is convincing, and it may leave readers with a newfound respect for the term that gives his book its title.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune“This thoughtful essay will be balm to those who dare to be elitist.” —Toronto Star

One of the truly original books of the decade—written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence—Zone tells the story of a French Intelligence agent on his way to the Vatican to sell a briefcase of secrets. Over the course of his train ride, he thinks back over his life and all the damage he's caused in this violent century.

Recipient of three French literary awards, Mathias Énard's follow-up to the critically acclaimed Zone is a timely novel about a young Moroccan boy caught up in the turbulent events of the Middle East, and a possible murder.Exiled from his family for religious transgressions related to his feelings for his cousin, Lekhdar finds himself on the streets of Barcelona hiding from both the police and the Muslim Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thoughts, a group he worked for in Tangier not long after being thrown out on the streets by his father.Lekhdar's transformations—from a boy into a man, from a devout Muslim into a sinner—take place against the backdrop of some of the most important events of the past few years: the violence and exciting eruption of the Arab Spring and the devastating collapse of Europe's economy.If all that isn't enough, Lekhdar reunites with a childhood friend—one who is planning an assassination, a murder Lekhdar opposes.A finalist for the prestigious Prix Goncourt, Street of Thieves solidifies Énard's place as one of France's most ambitious and keyed-in novelists of this century. This novel may even take Zone's place in Christophe Claro's bold pronouncement that Énard's earlier work is “the novel of the decade, if not of the century.”Mathias Énard studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. A professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona, he received several awards for Zone—also available from Open Letter—including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre.Charlotte Mandell has translated works from a number of important French authors, including Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, Jean Genet, Guy de Maupassant, and Maurice Blanchot, among others.

In a world that demands faith in progress and growth, Limbo is a companion for the stuck, the isolated, delayed, stranded and those in the dark. Fusing memoir with a meditation on creative block and a cultural history of limbo, Dan Fox considers the role that fallow periods and states of inbetween play in art and life. Limbo is an essay about getting by when you can’t get along, employing a cast of artists, ghosts and sailors — including the author’s older brother who, in 1985, left England for good to sail the world — to reflect on the creative, emotional and political consequences of being stuck, and its opposites. From the Headington Shark to radical behavioural experiments, from life aboard a container ship to Sun Ra’s cosmology, Limbo argues that there can be no growth without stagnancy, no movement without inactivity, and no progress without refusal.
‘Reading Fox is like watching a gymnast perform a floor routine. He vaults and tumbles ideas and arguments, seamlessly incorporating criticism, pop culture, and stories from his own life, and sticks every landing.’ — Los Angeles Review of Books