The little trilogy

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Arnošt Lustig

"The Bitter Smell of Almonds brings together for the first time Arnost Lustig's short-story collection Street of Lost Brothers, the novel Dita Saxova, and the novellas of Indecent Dreams. The works in this omnibus edition reverberate with the torments of suffering and survival, loss and contradiction. Lustig's themes are as old and as universal as humankind's search for the meaning of existence, and his characters, often confronted with people or situations they cannot comprehend, attempt to come to terms with the unthinkable and with life itself."--BOOK JACKET.

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introduction by Reynolds Price

"Most readers know Truman Capote as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood; or they remember his notorious social life and wild and witty public appearances. But he was also the author of superb short tales that were as elegant as they were heartfelt, as grotesque as they were compassionate. Now, on the occasion of what would have been his eightieth birthday, Random House presents the first collection that includes all of Capote's short fiction - a volume that confirms his status as one of the masters of this form."--BOOK JACKET.

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Johann Peter Hebel

Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) was one of the greatest story-tellers in the history of German literature. The anecdotes and curiosities collected here have endeared him to generations of readers in Germany and have won him many distinguished admirers further afield, including Tolstoy and Kafka, who habitually carried a copy of Hebel stories in his pocket and referred to one of them - 'Unexpected Reunion' - as 'the most wonderful story in the world'. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein recommended The Treasure Chest to his pupils when he worked as a schoolteacher, and later read from it to his friends. First issued in collected form in 1811, Hebel's stories were originally published in a popular almanach he edited for a wide and unsophisticated readership. They cover a broad spectrum of human experience with heroes ranging from Napoleon and the enlightened Austrian Emperor Joseph, to common soldiers, working men and women, servants and petty criminals. Hebel was a robust, humorous, humane and eminently sane personality whose sympathies lay with the little man and woman, whilst always being ready to recognize justice and generosity in those in power and authority. He wrote in a style close to ordinary speech and his voice carries without effort over the intervening years.

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Ernesto Mallo

"Buenos Aires: city of contrasts, contradictions; always on the edge of chaos; in love with its own disorder despite the crude, transitory violence, the lack of law and order, the ubiquitously hurled insult, the thunderous boom of traffic, and honking, hurled curses. Its inhabitants love/hate the city. In the language of the port-dwellers, irony is currency. The multimillionaires of Puerto Madero deal in this irony with as fluently as the workers in the "misery cities," which is what we call the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. This shared language comes from the mansions and the shanties that are built side by side, separate by nothing but a single street or railroad track--contradiction within eyesight. In the stories that make up this volume we glimpse what Buenos Aires really is: distinctive points of view, as well as the narrative potential of a city that has reinvented itself many times over. This collection highlights the relations between the social and economic classes--from their tensions, from their cruelties, and also from their love. Deep inside, inhabitants of Buenos Aires live this contradiction."--page 13.