Classics

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The Ice Palace

Two girls. One unforgettable encounter. A frozen world hiding secrets that words cannot express. Eleven-year-old Siss is confident, outgoing, and well-liked by her classmates. Unn, who has recently arrived in their small Norwegian village to live with her aunt, is her opposite: withdrawn, mysterious, and burdened by a private grief. When the girls spend an evening together, they form an intense connection that neither can fully understand. But the following day, Unn disappears after venturing into a spectacular frozen waterfall known as the Ice Palace—a labyrinth of shimmering chambers sculpted by winter itself. As the village searches for Unn, Siss struggles with the loss of a friendship that had barely begun. Unable to explain what passed between them, she withdraws into silence, carrying Unn’s memory like a secret of her own. With hauntingly beautiful prose, Tarjei Vesaas transforms the Norwegian winter landscape into a reflection of loneliness, grief, and the mysteries of human connection. The Ice Palace is a quiet, deeply moving novel about childhood, loss, and the invisible bonds that can change us forever. It won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1964.

Engagement

Gun-Britt Sundström

Martina and Gustav are university students in 1970s Stockholm when they meet and fall in love. Their relationship quickly becomes an ongoing negotiation over what it means to be a couple: how much time lovers owe each other, whether fidelity is essential, and whether commitment must eventually lead to marriage. Gustav dreams of building a conventional life together, while Martina fears that marriage and domestic expectations will undermine her independence. Over the years, they separate and reunite, repeatedly drawn back to one another despite their incompatible ideas about love. Meanwhile, Martina observes friends settling down, participates in political demonstrations, and explores philosophical ideas in search of a life that feels genuinely her own. With sharp wit, intellectual curiosity and emotional honesty, Sundström challenges romantic conventions without offering easy answers. Both a love story and a feminist examination of personal freedom, Engagement asks whether two people can remain devoted to each other without sacrificing their individuality.

Fall, Bomb, Fall

Fall, Bomb, Fall

Gerrit Kouwenaar

On 10 May 1940, seventeen-year-old Karel Ruis learns that Nazi Germany has invaded the Netherlands. Bored with his sheltered, bourgeois existence, he initially welcomes the upheaval, imagining that the war might bring the adventure and excitement he has been craving. But as German bombs fall and his familiar world begins to collapse, Karel is forced to confront the terrifying reality of war. After undertaking a secret mission to deliver a letter to his uncle’s Jewish mistress, he falls in love with her daughter and dreams of escaping with the two women. His romantic hopes, however, collide with the desperate choices people must make to survive. Drawing partly on Kouwenaar’s own experiences during the Nazi occupation, this poignant novella traces the painful passage from adolescent naivety to adulthood. With understated humour and emotional precision, it reveals how quickly war can destroy illusions and transform ordinary lives.

Netherlands 2025

The City

Valerian Pidmohylnyi

Stepan Radchenko arrives in Kyiv from the Ukrainian countryside with ambitions of studying economics and eventually returning home to help modernise rural life. But the capital soon becomes more than a place of education: it is a world of opportunity, temptation, and reinvention. As Stepan moves from the city’s outskirts into its cultural and literary circles, he pursues success as a writer while navigating a series of romantic relationships that shape his understanding of himself. Gradually, his original ideals give way to ambition, vanity, and a growing desire to conquer the city on his own terms. Kyiv becomes both the setting for his transformation and a force that challenges his sense of belonging. First published in 1928, The City is considered a landmark of modern Ukrainian literature. Combining psychological realism with philosophical reflection, Pidmohylnyi examines urbanisation, social mobility, desire, and the tension between rural origins and modern identity. Stepan’s journey raises a timeless question: when we reinvent ourselves to achieve success, what parts of our original selves do we leave behind?

The Women's Courtyard

The Women's Courtyard

Khadija Mastoor

The Women’s Courtyard follows Aliya, a young Muslim girl growing up in an extended family in the years surrounding the Partition of British India. Much of the family’s life unfolds within the secluded courtyard of their home, where women manage domestic responsibilities, negotiate relationships, and respond to the political changes taking place beyond their walls. While the men become absorbed in the struggle for independence, the women face mounting financial difficulties and the consequences of decisions made largely without their participation. Aliya, meanwhile, longs for an education and a future that extends beyond the limits imposed on her. Through the everyday experiences of the household, Mastur presents a distinctive perspective on a period usually narrated through political leaders and public events. The novel explores gender inequality, family obligations, and women’s quiet determination to claim greater control over their lives.

One, None, and a Hundred Grand

One, None, and a Hundred Grand

Luigi Pirandello

In One, None, and a Hundred Grand, Vitangelo Moscarda discovers that his wife sees his nose as slightly crooked, a detail he has never noticed himself. This seemingly trivial observation triggers an existential crisis as he realizes that everyone perceives him differently, creating countless versions of his identity. As he attempts to escape these conflicting images, he begins to question the nature of selfhood, reality, and social identity. Through absurdity and philosophical reflection, Pirandello explores the instability of personal identity and the impossibility of truly knowing oneself through the eyes of others.

Jangar: The Heroic Epic of the Kalmyk Nomads

Jangar: The Heroic Epic of the Kalmyk Nomads

Saglar Bougdaeva

For centuries, the Kalmyk people of the Eurasian steppe have preserved Jangar, a magnificent heroic epic celebrating courage, loyalty, and the survival of their nomadic culture. At its centre is Jangar, the legendary ruler of Bumba, a mythical land of abundance and harmony where seventy kingdoms unite under his leadership. Surrounded by extraordinary warriors, Jangar defends his homeland against formidable enemies, monstrous giants, and rival rulers. His companions undertake daring quests, rescue captives, defeat powerful adversaries, and demonstrate remarkable feats of strength and bravery. Blending fantastical adventures with lyrical descriptions of horses, feasts, battles, and the steppe landscape, the epic reflects the ideals and aspirations of the Kalmyk people. Preserved through generations of oral performance by traditional storytellers, Jangar also bears witness to a culture that has endured conquest, displacement, and political repression. Saglar Bougdaeva’s English translation introduces international readers to this remarkable literary heritage, restoring a largely overlooked masterpiece of Eurasian oral literature to the world.

Name of the Rose

Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose is a historical mystery set in an Italian Benedictine abbey in 1327. William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar with a sharp analytical mind, arrives with his young assistant Adso of Melk just as a series of mysterious deaths begins to trouble the monastery. As William investigates, he discovers that the abbey’s extraordinary library contains forbidden knowledge and that disagreements over religious doctrine have created dangerous rivalries among the monks. The investigation becomes a struggle over the relationship between faith, reason, and the control of information. Eco combines medieval history, detective fiction, and philosophical debate to explore censorship, institutional authority, and the power of books. The novel asks whether knowledge can remain free when institutions fear the consequences of questioning established beliefs, revealing how the pursuit of truth can become dangerous in a world governed by rigid authority.

Apple in the Dark

Apple in the Dark

Clarice Lispector

The Apple in the Dark follows Martim, a man who flees his home after believing he has committed a terrible act against his wife. Seeking refuge in the Brazilian countryside, he finds work on a remote farm owned by two women, Vitória and Ermelinda. Away from the structures of his former life, Martim begins to experience the world as if he were discovering it for the first time. His escape becomes a profound journey into the nature of consciousness, language, morality, and personal identity. Through introspective prose and philosophical reflections, Clarice Lispector explores what remains of a person when familiar social roles and established beliefs fall away. Rather than offering a conventional narrative of guilt and redemption, the novel examines the unsettling possibility of creating oneself anew. It is a deeply existential work about freedom, responsibility, and the struggle to understand what it means to be human.

Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories portraying the lives of ordinary people in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. The stories follow children, adolescents, adults, and elderly characters as they confront family obligations, unfulfilled ambitions, religious expectations, and the limitations of their social environment. Some experience moments of sudden insight that reveal the compromises and disappointments shaping their lives, while others remain trapped by fear, habit, or economic necessity. Joyce presents Dublin as a city where political stagnation, social conventions, and the influence of the Catholic Church affect even the most private decisions. His restrained prose captures the significance of everyday encounters and seemingly minor events. The collection explores paralysis, longing, and the desire for escape, offering a powerful portrait of individuals who recognise the possibility of change but often struggle to act upon it.

I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

I Who Have Never Known Men follows an unnamed young woman imprisoned underground with thirty-nine other women. Guarded by silent male soldiers, the women live in a confined space, deprived of privacy, freedom, and meaningful knowledge of the outside world. Unlike her fellow prisoners, who remember their lives before captivity, the narrator has no memories of the world beyond the prison and has never experienced ordinary human relationships. When an unexpected event allows the women to escape, they emerge into an unfamiliar landscape that appears almost entirely devoid of human life. Forced to survive together, they search for answers about their captivity and the fate of humanity, but the world offers few explanations. As time passes, the narrator struggles to understand concepts such as love, sexuality, memory, and death without having experienced them in the ways others have. Blending dystopian fiction with philosophical reflection, Harpman’s novel explores freedom, loneliness, human nature, and what it means to be human when society and its inherited knowledge have disappeared.

The Dark Interval

The Dark Interval

Rainer Maria Rilke

Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke's voluminous, never-before-translated letters to bereaved friends and acquaintances, The Dark Interval is a profound vision of the mourning process and a meditation on death's place in our lives. Following the format of Letters to a Young Poet, this book arranges Rilke's letters into an uninterrupted sequence, showcasing the full range of the great author's thoughts on death and dying, as well as his sensitive and moving expressions of consolation and condolence. Presented with care and authority by master translator Ulrich Baer, The Dark Interval is a literary treasure, an indispensable resource for anyone searching for solace, comfort, and meaning in a time of grief.