Last Name	First Name	Language	Annotation
Nadir	Shams	French	Shams Nadir. The Astrolabe of the Sea [L'astrolabe de la mer]. Tr. C. Dickson. City Lights Books [Editions Stock, 1975]. 1996. 128 pp. Paper: $9.95; ISBN 0-87286-314-X. A mysterious astrolabe that unfolds "the fabric of dreams" to all who gaze upon it was once consigned to the depths of the sea by a Persian king who did not want men "to forget the weight of the concrete and the empire of the real." Centuries later, it is found by a castaway navigator, who is captivated by its stories that combine elements from the realm of myth and dreams, conjuring up a world where the imagination holds sway.
Nadolny	Sten	German	Sten Nadolny. The God of Impertinence [Ein Gott der Frechheit]. Tr. Breon Mitchell. Viking Penguin [R. Piper GmbH & Co. KG, 1994]. 1997. 214 pp. Cloth: $23.95; ISBN 0-670-87301-2. The naked, charcoal-colored man with red hair who steals the flag from the police station in Greece on a sunny spring day obviously isn't ordinary. Indeed, it could be said, and it would be true, that he is extraordinary. He is none other than Hermes, god of stolen kisses, insolence, erotic freedom, turmoil, sleep, thievery, and messenger to the gods. Hermes is looking for adventure and love, preferably the physical kind. He has been liberated to enchant, to save the world from the corruption of crass cynicism and to resurrect virtues of mischief, curiosity, imagination, and daring...and to fall in love. His travels lead Hermes from Europe to Athens (Georgia) and Sparta (Illinois) and, yes, above and beyond human boundaries. On his odyssey, Hermes realizes that he must supercharge those qualities of impertinence and roguery with godlike impetus. It is the only way he himself can survive.
Næss	Atle	Norwegian	Atle Næss. Doubting Thomas: A Novel about Caravaggio [Den Tvilende Thomas]. Tr. Anne Born. London. Peter Owen. U.S. Distributor: Dufour. 2000. 160 pp. Cloth: $29.95; ISBN 0-7206-1082-6. At the center of this literary detective story are the events of a May evening in Rome in 1606 when the painter Caravaggio was challenged to a duel and killed a man. What was the cause of the fight that resulted in his fleeing Rome into exile? Evidence found in the Vatican archives provides some clues in the form of first-person witness statements of nine people who came in contact with the artist before his flight and subsequent mysterious death. The book asks how far an artist may go and how an aggressive, self-destructive, heavy-drinking libertine could create an art of genius.
Nagarkar	Kiran	Marathi	Kiran Nagarkar. Seven Sixes are Forty-Three [Saat Sakkam Trechalis]. Tr. Shabha Slee. Heinemann [Mauj Publications, 1974]. 1995. 177 pp. Paper: $10.95; ISBN 0-435-95088-6. "What difference does it make?" asks Kushank as he plays both witness and protagonist in a drama teeming with the experiences of old friends, relatives, and lovers.
Nai’an and Guanzhog	Shi and Luo	Chinese	Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong. The Broken Seals: Part One of The Marshes of Mount Liang [Shuibu Zhuan or Water Margin]. Trs. John and Alex Dent-Young. The Chinese University Press. 1994. 434 pp. Paper: $23.00; ISBN 962-201-602-2. When Marshall Hong breaks the seals which generations of Taoist Masters have placed on the temple doors to hold back 108 incarcerated Demon Princes, powerful forces of disorder are released. One after another, brave men fall out with officialdom and are obliged to join the brotherhood of the rivers and lakes─the mixed company of heroes and vagabonds who live by their wits and their fighting skills. The story follows first one hero, then another, as their paths converge and part, until finally 108 brave─but not entirely admirable─men are united at the outlaws' stronghold in the Marshes of Mount Liang. This volume consists of the first 22 chapters of the full 120-chapter version. It is the first English translation based on this version and including much of the verse.
Naishan	Cheng	Chinese	Cheng Naishan. The Banker. Tr. Britten Dean. China Books & Periodicals, Inc. 1992. 459 pp. Paper: $19.95; ISBN 0-8351-2492-4. Cheng Naishan, one of China's most popular writers, tells the story of the unknown events during the period of the Japanese invasion of China from 1937 through 1945. The tale is set against a background of high finance and bloody war. Zhu Jingchen, a mover and shaker in Shanghai banking circles, pits himself against shrewd business rivals, corrupt government operatives, and Japanese occupation officials as he attempts to maintain the commanding position previously enjoyed by his Cathay Republic Bank. Dean also translated Cheng's book of short stories, The Piano Tuner.
Nakagami	Kenji	Japanese	Kenji Nakagami. Snakelust. Tr. Andrew Rankin. Kodansha International (Tokyo) and Kodansha America. 1999. 144 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 4-7700-2354-5. Kenji Nakagami (1946-1992) has been referred to as "the Japanese Hemingway" for his tough but lyrical prose. He emerged in the 1970s from the ghetto of the Japanese underclass and his meteoric rise caused an instant sensation. This collection of seven short stories—his first book to appear in English translation—spans the entire spectrum of his writing from 1974 to 1981, which usually focuses on the violent and unpredictable lives of his contemporaries, but also includes fantasies reflecting his rural birth. They range in period from the present day to the Middle Ages, with a varied cast of warriors, hoodlums, dreamers, and priests who confront us with the disturbing fact of man's ultimate helplessness before the power of female sexuality. Each story unfolds against the otherworldly landscape of Nakagami's native Kumano, the wild, mountainous region he called "the crotch of Japan."
Nalkowska	Zofia	Polish	Zofia Nalkowska. Medallions[Medaliony]. Tr. and intro. Diana Kuprel. Evanston. Northwestern University Press. 2000 [Poland, 1946]. Cloth: $39.95; ISBN 0-8101-1742-8. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-8101-1743-6. Jewish Lives Series. The burning of the Warsaw ghetto broke Zofia Nalkowska's life in two; in the years to come, the need to bear witness to the horrors she had witnessed led this gifted member of the Polish avant-garde to write the stories collected in Medallions. Considered a masterpiece of anti-fascist world literature, Medallions stands as the culmination of Nalkowska's literary style—a style that the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz once described as "the iron capital of her art and one of the very few exportables in our national literature." Written in documentary form with simple, concise, severely elegant prose, these narratives give voice to the experience of victims of the Nazi genocide. Medallions includes seven short stories and one summation, "The Adults and Children of Auschwitz." These terse, sometimes fragmented pieces take the form of testimonials, private interviews, and chance conversations in which the protagonists, speaking for themselves with their sometimes limited understanding of the human drama, also speak on behalf of millions.
Narayan	R.K.	Sanskrit	R. K. Narayan. The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 2000. 179 pp. Paper: $14.00; ISBN 0-226-56822-9. Together with the other great Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata embodies much of the cultural and religious heritage of India. Based on the narrative of the great war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, it tells of warriors, kings, saints, and goddesses caught up in the romance and drama of family intrigue. With its diversity of plots and themes—including the philosophical teachings of the Bhagavada Gita—the Mahabharata has entertained and influenced Indian audiences for nearly two thousand years. R. K. Narayan's abbreviated prose version, which is now available in paperback, features language that is clear and direct, allowing the complex nature of the original narrative to become easily accessible to the modern English-language reader. Among Narayan's many other works are the novels Gods, Demons, and Others, Swami and Friends, and Waiting for Mahatma, all published by Chicago.
Nasrin	Taslima	Bengali	Taslima Nasrin. The Game in Reverse. Tr. Carolyne Wright. George Braziller. 1995. 64 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 0-8076-1391-6. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-8076-1392-4. The Game in Reverse is the first volume of Nasrin's poetry in English translation. Presented here are more than 40 of the poems that have generated both an international following and considerable controversy for the author. These poems illuminate such contentious subjects as the daily indignities and far-reaching repression suffered by women in Bangladeshi Muslim society. Nasrin decries the physical and mental abuse inflicted on Bangladeshi women and enjoins society to reconsider its attitudes toward all victims of persecution, especially women. Nasrin gained widespread recognition in 1993 when her best-selling novel, Shame, was banned by the Bangladeshi government. Since 1994, she has been in hiding following death threats from Islamic fundamentalist groups. She won the 1994 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Included are poems from I Couldn't Care Less, Banished Without and Within, Captive in the Abyss, Behula Floated the Raft Alone, and Pain Come Pouring Down, I'll Measure Out My Life for You. Wright won a 1993 ALTA Outstanding Translation Award for Jorge Teillier's In Order to Talk With the Dead.
Negroni	Maria	Spanish	María Negroni. Islandia: A Poem. Tr. Anne Twitty. Barrytown, NY. Station Hill. 2001 [Avila Editores, Venezuela, 1994]. 172 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 1-886449-15-5. Bilingual. Islandia is the first English translation of a lyrical literary work, presented here in alternating prose and verse sections. The prose tells of Nordic heroes exiled for generations on a frozen island of the North, while the author's own persona (as a poet exiled in present-day New York City) speaks to the conditions of a woman's life in urban America. Apparently polar aspects of the work approach each other across a chasm of mutually reinforcing but sharply distinct senses of absence, creating an extended parable of the tragic isolation of the sexes in the Western world. María Negroni'a poems, plays, essays, and translations have been widely published in both Latin America and Spain. Anne Twitty's translations of selections from María Negroni's works have been published in various periodicals, and her translation of Night Journey [El viaje de la noche] is scheduled to appear in a bilingual edition to be published by Princeton University Press.
Neruda	Pablo	Spanish	Pablo Neruda. Heaven Stones. Tr. Maria Jacketti. Cross-Cultural Communications. 1993. 79 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 0-89304-746-5. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 0-89304-747-3. International Writers 2. Foreword by Marjorie Agosín. Bilingual collection of poems that "awaken us to the spectacular gamut of the most ordinary to the most dazzling of stones which inhabit both Earth and Heaven. He considers the strong transparency of quartz. To him the emerald is an all-seeing eye. He observes and teaches us to see while passing by the amethysts and agates of Isla Negra.... Above all, he makes us stop before the earthy beauty which is heavenly" (Agosín). Pablo Neruda. Seaquake. Trs. Maria Jacketti and Dennis Maloney. White Pine Press. 1993. 64 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-877727-82-6. Seaquake contains 17 poems by Pablo Neruda in which the Chilean author writes about some of the offerings of the sea such as the starfish, octopus, conch shell, and other sea creatures. Neruda, in this poetry book, shows how men can meet nature and the sea throughout their thinking and their writing. According to the editor, "The poems in Seaquake were written in 1969 and printed in a limited edition in Chile in 1970. Seaquake was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the library of Neruda's house in Santiago. Published in 1990 in Chile, this marks its first publication in English."
Neruda	Pablo	Spanish	Pablo Neruda. Fully Empowered [Plenos Poderes]. Tr. Alastair Reid. New Directions [Editorial Losada, S.A., 1962]. 1994. 144 pp. Paper: $10.95; ISBN 0-8112-1281-5. Neruda himself regarded this collection as a particular favorite. The 36 poems vary from short, intense lyrics through characteristic Neruda odes and whimsical addresses to friends to magnificent meditations on the office of poet, and include "The People," the most celebrated of his later poems. Many of these poems explore contradiction and paradox, and the attendant theme of the poet as a cluster of different selves, often contradictory. Pablo Neruda. Neruda's Garden: An Anthology of Odes. Tr. Maria Giachetti. Latin American Literary Review Press. 1995. 253 pp. Paper: ISBN 0-935480-68-4. Bilingual. These odes demonstrate Neruda's ability to present ordinary items in new and surprising ways. The poems are gathered as Odas elementales (Elemental Odes), Nuevas odas elementales (New Elemental Odes), 1956; Tercer libro de odas (Third Book of Odes), 1957; and Navegaciones y regresos (Voyages and Homecomings), 1959. Giachetti has also translated A Gabriela Mistral Reader (White Pine Press); Neruda's Heaven Stones (Las piedras del cielo); and the recently discovered manuscript Seaquake (Maremoto), co-translated by Dennis Maloney.
Neruda	Pablo	Spanish	Pablo Neruda. Odes to Opposites. Selected and Illustrated: Ferris Cook. Tr. Ken Krabbenhoft. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Company. 1995. 152 pp. Cloth: $22.50; ISBN 0-8212-2227-9. Bilingual companion volume to Odes to Common Things. Each poem deals with an abstract concept, emotion, place, or natural phenomenon and is coupled with its "opposite." The odes are accompanied by pencil drawings whose character reflects that of Neruda's works. Includes, among others, "Ode to enchanted light/Ode to nighttime," "Ode to solitude/Ode to energy," "Ode to a secret love/To my duties," and "Ode to thanks/Ode to envy."
Ni Dhomhnaill	Nuala	Irish	Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The Astrakhan Cloak. Tr. Paul Muldoon. Wake Forest University Press. 1993. 103 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-916390-55-1. Paper: ISBN 0-916390-54-3. Bilingual collection of poems selected and translated by Muldoon, whose own love for the Irish language is matched by his appreciation of Ní Dhomhnaill's skillful negotiation between the forms, fables, and idioms of an older Ireland and the commodity culture, depth-psychology, and Eurospeak of modern Ireland and Europe. Ní Dhomhnaill has one previous selection with translations by Michael Hartnett. Many of Ireland's leading poets contributed translations to Pharaoh's Daughter, also published by Wake Forest.
Nietzsche	Fredrich	German	Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophical Writings. Eds. Reinhold Grimm and Caroline Molina y Vedia. Continuum Books. 1995. 270 pp. Cloth: $29.50; ISBN 0-8264-0278-X. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-8264-0279-8. The German Library, Volume 48. This volume includes writings from The Birth of Tragedy; Untimely Meditations; Schopenhauer as Educator; Human, All-Too-Human; The Gay Science; Beyond Good and Evil, and more.
Nievo	Stanislao	Italian	Stanislao Nievo. The Blue Whale [La Balena azzurra]. Tr. Gaetano Rando. Toronto. Guernica. 2000 [Mondadori, Milan, 1990]. 152 pp. Paper: $10.00; ISBN 1-55071-118-0. Picas Series 14. The Blue Whale is the captivating story of a close encounter between a whale and a woman told from the perspective of both protagonists. A scientific project studying the sounds emitted by blue whales takes an unexpected turn when one of the group of whales that is the subject of the study shows signs of attempting to communicate with Miriam, the project team's statistician. This strange encounter takes on increasingly deeper meanings as the whale saves Miriam when she is swept overboard and speaks to her in a language she does not understand as she lies in a trance-like state. The primordial elemental tie between the females of two species so different in genetic terms yet so similar at a psycho-etiological level brings the whale and Miriam to finally achieve a mystic telepathic communication through the mysterious and instinctive bond which links them. Stanislao Nievo, one of Italy's leading contemporary writers, has also translated Kipling and Defoe.
Nimier	Marie	French	Marie Nimier. The Giraffe [La girafe]. Tr. Mary Feeney. Four Walls Eight Windows/Publishers Group West [Editions Gallimard, 1993]. 1995. 201 pp. Cloth: $18.00; ISBN 1-566858-026-6. With a precise, almost clinical eye, Nimier lays the fantastic groundwork of this story: Joseph, a young man, himself an outsider to mainstream French society because of his African ancestry, gets a job in the zoo. There he is made caretaker of the zoo's giraffe, Solange. Solange both literally and metaphorically rises above the clumsy, grasping humans who are her captors, and Nimier makes plausible Joseph's tragi-comic love─both sexual and spiritual─for the creature. But while Joseph's love for Solange grows, his relationship with the rest of the world disintigrates. Marie Nimier. Hypnotism Made Easy [L'hypnotisme à la portée de tous]. Tr. Sophie Hawkes. Four Walls Eight Windows [Editions Gallimard, 1992]. 1996. 268 pp. Cloth: $18.00; ISBN 1-56858-036-3. This novel is narrated by Cora, who discovers a manual entitled Hypnotism Made Easy at the age of ten. Hypnotism becomes the device for the girl's adolescent rebellion; she reads a chapter a year until she reaches eighteen. Her initial attempts to apply her newfound skills flounder; she hypnotizes but fails to revive first a parakeet, then a young friend. But gradually she absorbs the book's lessons and is able to manipulate the world of adults surrounding her. Nimier, author of The Giraffe, has published five novels and has been honored by the French Academy and the French Literary Society. Hawkes has translated Diderot's The Indiscreet Jewels and Klossowski's The Baphomet and The Women of Rome.
Noll		Portuguese	Jo_o Gilberto Noll. Hotel Atlantico [Hotel Atlántico]. Tr. David Treece. Paul & Company/Boulevard Books with the Centre for the Study of Brazilian Culture and Society [Companhia das letras, 1989]. 1997. 151 pp. Paper: $16.95; ISBN 1-899460-65-9. A fantasy set in a wickedly realistic version of the Brazilian interior--dusty towns where everyone seems to be either terminally naive or gapingly on the make. Noll captures this world in a rolling narrative that's always ironic and often hilarious. In Hotel Atlantico a "resting" soap opera star takes off in an odyssey in search of personal meaning--but he has started from a point of such absolute washed-up meaninglessness that things can't improve much. His pointless adventures seem to make some very wise points about the contemporary Brazilian psyche and western man in general. In the companion piece, "Harmada," a man searching for the ultimate unobtainable consumer good--"serenity, something like serenity" has a series of (mis)adventures that are even more lyrical and shocking than in Hotel Atlantico.
Nooteboom	Cees	Dutch	Cees Nooteboom. The Following Story [Het Volgende Verhaal]. Tr. Ina Rilke. Harcourt Brace & Company. 1994. 115 pp. Cloth: $14.95; ISBN 0-15-100098-0. What happened to Herman Mussert? He went to bed last night in Amsterdam, thinking of outer space and its lifeless planets, and now he wakes in Lisbon, with Portuguese money in his wallet. If he is himself, he is a bachelor, a former teacher of Latin and Greek who looks like Socrates and who spends all his time reading. But is he himself? Or is he dead? If he is dead, what is he doing in a Lisbon hotel, in a room where he slept with another man's wife more than twenty years ago? With lyrical, sardonic prose braided with myth and symbol, Nooteboom tells the story of a funny-looking man who loved beauty.
Nooteboom	Cees	Dutch	Cees Nooteboom. The Captain of the Butterflies. Trs. Leonard Nathan and Herlinde Spahr. Sun & Moon Classics/Consortium Book Sales. 1997. Paper: $11.95; ISBN 1-55713-315-8. In this, his first collection of poetry published in English, Nooteboom reveals a wry mix of surrealist-like images in dialogue with precise, realistic language. Among the approximately 75 poems are "The House on the Island," "I Maschi," "Churchill's Black Dog or Mr. Nuszbaum Complains," "Rockplant," "Altiplano," "The Page on the Lily," "Silesius Dreams," "Finis Terrae," and "Last Act." Author of Rituals, Philip and the Others, In the Dutch Mountains, The Knight Has Died, A Song of Truth and Semblance, Morkusei, and The Following Story, Nooteboom won the 1982 Pegasus Prize for Literature, and The Following Story won the 1993 European Literary Prize for Best Novel.
Nothomb	Amélie	French	Amélie Nothomb. Loving Sabatage [Sabotage amoureux]. Tr. Andrew Wilson. New York. New Directions. 2000 [Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 1993]. 144 pp. Cloth $21.95; ISBN 0-8112-1459-1. Set in the European section of Peking during the mid-70s, Loving Sabotage is the story of the seven-year-old daughter of Belgian diplomats. It opens with a pretend-war between the compound's children—the Allies vs. the Germans—and continues at a remarkable pace as this energetic little girl experiences a great infatuation in the midst of all the play. Amélie Nothomb, whose work has been translated into 14 languages, has published eight previous novels. The first, Hygiène de l'assassin (1992), was an overnight bestseller in France. Loving Sabotage is only her second book to be published in English.
Novarina	Valère	French	Valère Novarina. The Theater of the Ears. Tr. Allen S. Weiss. Sun & Moon Press/Consortium Book Sales. 1996. 160 pp. Paper: $13.95; ISBN 1-55713-251-8. Novarina is here introduced to American audiences with an essay, "In Praise of Solecism" by the translator, and with essays by Novarina on his ideas for drama and performance. As Novarina makes clear in "Letter to the Actors," he advocates what he terms as "linguistic carnage." Everything that destroys or circumvents our linguistic habits is valorized: errors, slurs, babble, lapses, agrammaticisms, malapropisms, aphasia, and whatever other effects─psychopathological or quotidian─loosen the tongue, worsen speech, fracture the word."
Novo	Salvador	Spanish	Salvador Novo. The War of the Fatties and Other Stories from Aztec History. Tr. Michael Alderson. The University of Texas Press. 1994. 256 pp. Cloth: $37.50; ISBN 0-292-79059-7. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-292-75554-6. This collection of Aztec tales includes a tongue-in-cheek retelling of an episode from the Mexican "Trojan War," where naked women from Tlateloco defeat Tenochtitlan's invading army by squirting them with breast milk. Included in the collection are satiric allusions to the politics and tactics used by Mexico's current ruling party, PRI, as well as the political maneuvers, corruption, and ambition that have determined Mexican history for two centuries before the Spanish conquest. This collection is a lighthearted, historically accurate introduction to Aztec culture. The collection begins with a 21-page introduction to the life of the author, Salvador Novo, which also includes many of his poems. Additionally, the bibliography offers further insight into the life of Novo by including the following subjects: Texts and Authors Mentioned by Novo, Other Works of Interest, Plays by Novo, Plays translated by Novo, Novels by Novo, Poetry by Novo, Translations of Novo's Poetry, History and Literary Criticism, Anthologies by Novo, Critical Studies and Books about Novo, and Bibliographies of Novo's World. There are three appendices, which include a translation of the article "Mexicans Like 'Em Fat" (Empresas Editoriales, 1964), a lineage chart of the Kings of Tenochtitlan and neighboring cities, and a map of Anahuac and Central Mexico. The glossary contains pronunciation and definitions of all the Nahuatl names and terms included in the text.
Nyiri	Janos	Hungarian	Janos Nyiri. Battlefields and Playgrounds [Madarorzszág]. Trs. William Brandon and the author. Farrar, Straus and Giroux [Teka, Budapest, 1990]. 1995. 536 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 0-374-10918-4. Named Book of the Year by The Financial Times, Battlegrounds and Playgrounds is the story of József Sondor, a tough, irreverently witty Jewish boy growing up in WWII Hungary. József carries the reader into the whirl of everyday life in war-torn Budapest, from the eve of the Holocaust in Hungary to the Russian liberation in 1945. Through his eyes, we witness history, or, as he sees it, the adult world gone mad. This adventure story reminds us of the wisdom of children and the power of humor in the face of tragedy. Nyiri is the author of the novel Streets and the play If Winter Comes.