July saw a bumper crop of new classics from a wide range of publishing houses. Of the titles below I’m particularly excited about the Wakefield Press’s new edition of On Homo rodans and Other Writings by Remedios Varo, an expanded version of their previous anthology Letters, Dreams and Other Writings. On Homo rodans includes material that has never been published before, by a fascinating surrealist artist, the closest friend of one of my heroes, Leonora Carrington.
The Lily in the Valley by Honoré de Balzac (1835)
A new translation of one of Balzac’s finest novels, this tale of misguided passion centres on a young aristocrat who falls into a cloaked, coded entanglement with an older countess – a relationship that is upended when he becomes involved with a new lover.
NYRB Classics | 302 pages | translated by Peter Bush | introduction by Geoffrey O’Brien
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton (1904)
London, 1984. England has given up on democracy and selects its rulers by lottery. This time it is the turn of clerk Auberon Quin, a prankster who decrees that each borough of London become an independent mediaeval state, complete with costumes and coats of arms. The citizens bear his joke with varying levels of patience – until Adam Wayne, the intractable Provost of Notting Hill, sword in hand, takes the game far too seriously.
Penguin Classics | 192 pages
Deep River by Shusaku Endo (1993)
A group of Japanese tourists journey to the sacred River Ganges, each on a secret personal pilgrimage. Widower Isobe mourns for the devoted wife he neglected; gentle children’s writer Numanda seeks out the bird he believes saved his life; Kiguchi is haunted by his time as a soldier along the Highway of Death; and Mitsuko reconnects with the classmate she tempted away from the church and cruelly discarded.
Pushkin Press Classics | 288 pages | translated by Van C. Gessel
Green Water, Green Sky by Mavis Gallant (1959)
This is the tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, an American divorcée, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter lead an itinerant existence – Venice, Cannes and Paris as a backdrop – glamorous and dependent. When Flor attempts to flee this untidy life and the oppressive rule of her eccentric mother, she instead succumbs to a gradual decline into insanity.
Daunt Books | 176 pages | foreword by Brandon Taylor
Climbing Days by Dorothy Pilley (1935)
When Dorothy Pilley first began climbing in the 1910s, female mountaineers were seen as a dangerous liability, their achievements ignored, unrecorded or disbelieved. Undeterred, Dorothy proved herself on the vertiginous slopes of Wales, Scotland and the Lake District before tackling rock faces in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rockies, Mount Fuji and the Himalayas. Her tireless championing of fellow women climbers and her own trailblazing example helped establish female alpinists as serious mountaineers with impressive records on bravery, skill and endurance.
Canongate Books | 400 pages | introduced by Dan Richards
Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee (1981)
It is the summer of 1851 and Charlotte Morrison is on holiday in Germany with her brother and his wife. On the surface, Charlotte is an unmarried aunt with a sparse, unfulfilled life. But beneath that quiet respectability lie unsuspected depths hidden murmurings. On a day trip boating down the Rhine, Charlotte sights a fellow traveller, Edward Newman, who releases the hissing floodwaters of her subconscious. Dark and dangerous, they sweep Charlotte towards the watershed of her life, stretching her imagination to its limit; almost to breaking point.
Daunt Books | 272 pages | foreword by Lauren Groff
Confessions of a Thug by Philip Meadows Taylor (1839)
Often overshadowed by Kipling’s Kim or Forster’s A Passage to India, Philip Meadows Taylor’s forgotten classic, Confessions of a Thug, is nevertheless the most influential novel of early nineteenth-century British India. This was the first dramatic account to expose a European readership to the fantastic world of the murderous Thugs, or highway robbers, who strangled their victims and who have ever since been a stable of Western popular culture. Writing in the voice of a captured Thug, Taylor presents an Orientalist fantasy that is part picaresque adventure and part colonial exposé.
Oxford World’s Classics | 552 pages | edited by Kim A. Wagner
On Homo rodans and Other Writings by Remedios Varo (1908-1963)
An updated, expanded edition of Remedios Varo’s translated writings, including pieces never before published in any language. These texts, never published during her lifetime, present something of a missing chapter, and offer the same qualities to be found in her visual work: an engagement with mysticism and magic, a breakdown of the border between the everyday and the marvellous, a love of mischief and an ongoing meditation on escape in all its forms.
Wakefield Press | 184 pages | edited and translated by Margaret Carson
Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi (1992)
In 1989, the Hong Kong cult classic writer Xi Xi was diagnosed with breast cancer and began writing in order to make sense of her diagnosis and treatment. Mourning a Breast, published two and a half years later, is a disarmingly honest and deeply personal account of the author's experience of a mastectomy and of her subsequent recovery.
NYRB Classics | 400 pages | translated by Jennifer Feeley
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Delighted to find you (thank you Simon Haisell) and looking forward to joining your shared reads. So pleased to see the Dorothy Pilley book. I read Dan Richards book about his aunt (also Climbing Days) and loved it. She was an amazing woman, I always remember Dan said she was the sort of aunt who gave children swords and bows and arrows as birthday gifts. The best sort!