{"title":"Staff Picks: Iti","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor summer\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-odyssey","title":"The Odyssey","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage, family and identity; and about travellers, hospitality and the changing meanings of home in a strange world. This vivid new translation—the first by a woman—matches the number of lines in the Greek original, striding at Homer’s sprightly pace. Emily Wilson employs elemental, resonant language and an iambic pentameter to produce a translation with an enchanting “rhythm and rumble” that avoids proclaiming its own grandeur.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAn engrossing tale told in a compelling new voice that allows contemporary readers to luxuriate in Homer’s descriptions and similes and to thrill at the tension and excitement of its hero’s adventures, Wilson recaptures what is “epic” about this wellspring of world literature. Specially bound paperback edition, with deckle-edging (rough-cut) pages and French flaps.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublis\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003ehed: USA, 2018\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublish\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003eer:  WW Norton\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePages: 592\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLanguage: English \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eISBN: 9780393356250\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Homer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56576251330891,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/9780393356250.jpg?v=1771590019"},{"product_id":"the-honditsch-cross","title":"The Honditsch Cross","description":"\u003cp\u003eWritten when Ingeborg Bachmann was only eighteen, \u003cem\u003eThe Honditsch Cross\u003c\/em\u003e, her second-longest completed work of prose, is a historical novella set during the final days of the Napoleonic occupation of Austria in 1813.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA young theology student, returning from Vienna to his family home in Carinthia, finds the invading troops stationed there, led by a despotic officer, who has been exploiting and terrorizing his family and friends. He is immediately thrown into the center of the conflict, torn between defending his homeland, the pull of physical desire, and the pursuit of his theological studies...\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this gripping work, Bachmann begins to explore themes that will pre-occupy her for the rest of her writing career: complex notions of nationality and patriotism, the roles and rights of women in patriarchal societies, the meaningless destruction of war and its aftermath, and the bitter moments of disillusionment that lead to intellectual maturity\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublis\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003ehed: USA, 2025\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublish\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003eer:  New Directions Books \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePages: 104\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLanguage: English \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eISBN: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e9780811238564\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ingeborg Bachmann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56717373800779,"sku":null,"price":17.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/9780811238564.jpg?v=1772876849"},{"product_id":"businessmen-as-lovers","title":"Businessmen as Lovers","description":"\u003cp\u003eMimi and Caroline set off to a beautiful Italian island, where they find themselves part of an eccentric cast of expats and vacationers including their debonair host and his mistress, a proud venture capitalist, an Iranian tycoon, and a villainous, slightly tragic local dentist. There is also Mimi's great love, Beetle, a quiet and unassuming English journalist. As everyone begins to relax and settle into the vacation, drinking and eating away the demands of everyday life, their impish plots culminate in an odd Mediterranean prank involving the poor dentist's lemon tree.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBack in print after many decades, \u003cem\u003eBusinessmen as Lovers\u003c\/em\u003e is an extraordinarily jubilant and delightful novel by the inimitable Rosemary Tonks: businessmen fall in love, too, but it is with each other.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Paperback \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  2026, UK\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 140\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English  \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: 9780811240246\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Rosemary Tonk","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57072501588299,"sku":null,"price":18.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/Screenshot2026-04-24at10.12.24.png?v=1777018424"},{"product_id":"max-fisher-questionnaire","title":"Max Fisher: Questionnaire","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Do you think you're a good friend? Are you a friend of yourself?\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBetween these two questions are 23 questions about friendship. Max Frisch's famous questionnaires come from the diary 1966-1971, and each of these ten questionnaires circles a topic: It's about marriage, women, humor, money, friendship, fatherhood, home, property and nothing less than the preservation of the human race. The answers are left to the imagination of the readers - an irresistible pleasure to read.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Hardcover \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  Germany, 2017\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: insel\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 81\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English  \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: \n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e9783458194354\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Max Frisch","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57284400808267,"sku":null,"price":17.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/Screenshot2026-05-12at18.54.41.png?v=1778604990"},{"product_id":"malina","title":"Malina","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePart detective novel, part love story, part psychoanalytic case study, Malina is a staggering portrait of a writer trying to tell her own story in a world dominated by men. 'I was subordinate to him from the beginning, and I must have known early on that he was destined to be my doom'A woman in postwar Vienna walks a tightrope between the two men in her life. There is her lover Ivan, beautiful and unavailable, who obsesses her.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnd there is Malina, the civil servant with whom she shares an apartment: reserved, fastidious, exacting, chillingly calm. As the balance of power between them starts to shift, she feels her fragile identity unravelling, gradually revealing the dark, bruised heart of her past.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Paperback \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  UK, 2019\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: Penguin Books\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 304\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English  \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: 9780241366240\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ingeborg Bachmann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57517072679243,"sku":null,"price":13.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/9780241366240.jpg?v=1780665592"},{"product_id":"contempt","title":"Contempt","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eContempt\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous--his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex--are evident in this story of a failing marriage. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eContempt\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  USA, 2004\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: New York Review of Books\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 272\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: 9781590171226\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alberto Moravia","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57589133934923,"sku":null,"price":19.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/9781590171226.jpg?v=1781602912"},{"product_id":"correspondence","title":"Correspondence","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePaul Celan (1920-70) is one of the best-known German poets of the Holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73) is recognized as one of post-World War II German literature's most important novelists, poets, and playwrights. It seems only appropriate that these two contemporaries and masters of language were at one time lovers, and they shared a lengthy, artful, and passionate correspondence.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCollected here for the first time in English are their letters written between 1948 and 1961. Their correspondence forms a moving testimony of the discourse of love in the age after Auschwitz, with all the symptomatic disturbances and crises caused by their conflicting backgrounds and their hard-to-reconcile designs for living-as a woman, as a man, as writers. In addition to the almost 200 letters, the volume includes an important exchange between Bachmann and Gisele Celan-Lestrange, who married Celan in 1951, as well as the letters between Paul Celan and Swiss writer Max Frisch.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Scarcely more breathlessly and desperately can two lovers ever have struggled for words. Little known among German literary historians, the relationship between these two poets amounts to one of the most dramatic and momentous occurrences in German literature.\"-FAZ, on the German edition\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  UK, 2019\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: Seagull Publishing\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 400\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: 9780857426420\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Ingeborg Bachmann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57589143634251,"sku":null,"price":19.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/Screenshot2026-06-16at11.45.09.png?v=1781603122"},{"product_id":"the-paris-review-256","title":"The Paris Review: 256","description":"\u003cp\u003eHarryette Mullen on the Art of Poetry: “I knew I would exhaust myself as subject matter, but I could take something and turn it upside down, inside out, add a few doodads, and that way it would become inexhaustible.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYan Lianke on the Art of Fiction:  “I personally didn’t think there was anything anti-war in writing about how an individual might be terrified of battle. I was really writing about my own fear.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProse by Lucy Ellmann, Chad Fore, Daisy Hildyard, Chigozie Obioma, Daniel Saldaña París, and Shuang Xuetao.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoetry by Zain Baweja, Jean Day, Hannah Piette, Frederick Seidel, Shamsher Bahadur Singh, Katana Smith, and Tran Hang My.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArt by Hadi Falapishi, Andrew Kuo, and Hannah Tishkoff; cover by Alex Da Corte.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: Paris Revew\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 230\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Paris Review","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57592844353867,"sku":null,"price":19.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/Screenshot2026-06-16at15.50.56.png?v=1781617942"},{"product_id":"the-agony-of-eros","title":"The Agony of Eros","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003eAn argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today's society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self. In today's increasingly narcissistic society, we have come to look for love and desire within the “inferno of the same.” Han offers a survey of the threats to Eros, drawing on a wide range of sources—Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde,Fifty Shades of Grey, Michel Foucault (providing a scathing critique of Foucault's valorization of power), Martin Buber, Hegel, Baudrillard, Flaubert, Barthes, Plato, and others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHan considers the “pornographication” of society, and shows how pornography profanes eros; addresses capitalism's leveling of essential differences; and discusses the politics of eros in today's “burnout society.” To be dead to love, Han argues, is to be dead to thought itself. Concise in its expression but unsparing in its insight, The Agony of Eros is an important and provocative entry in Han's ongoing analysis of contemporary society. This remarkable essay, an intellectual experience of the first order, affords one of the best ways to gain full awareness of and join in one of the most pressing struggles of the day: the defense, that is to say—as Rimbaud desired it—the “reinvention” of love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—from the foreword by Alain Badiou\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  USA, 2017\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: MIT Press\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 88\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: \u003cspan\u003e9780262533379\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Byung-Chul Han","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57610588258635,"sku":null,"price":16.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/Screenshot2026-06-18at10.39.52.png?v=1781772092"},{"product_id":"separate-rooms","title":"Separate Rooms","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWith an introduction by André Aciman, bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name. \u003cbr\u003eThomas, a young German musician, is dying. His older boyfriend, a renowned Italian writer named Leo, finds it impossible to watch the slow and inevitable demise of his lover; he condemns himself to moving cities every few weeks instead, in the hope of finding a semblance of peace. Wanting to preserve the passion of their relationship, Leo had forced Thomas to live separately: in separate rooms, separate towns, with separate lives.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBut now, face to face with true solitude, Leo must finally reckon with regret and nostalgia and the impossible striving of memory to recreate life. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"gmail_default\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublished:  UK, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePublisher: Hodder \u0026amp; Stoughton \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003ePages: 256\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eLanguage: English\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eISBN: 9781399734516\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Pier Vittorio Tondelli","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57620950057291,"sku":null,"price":14.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/8755\/1819\/files\/9781399734516.jpg?v=1781863281"}],"url":"https:\/\/desirelinesbookstore.com\/collections\/staff-picks-iti.oembed","provider":"desirelines books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}