The News from Central Europe

As promised, some more upcoming covers lifted from the 2010 Penguin Classics line-up. These are the 10 Central European Classics due in May. ~~I'm guessing that they're by David Pearson, as they remind me of his Simenon covers, but in fact I have no idea.~~ Robert Schumann tells me that they're the work of Jon Gray, better known in the designing world as gray318.

I'm very excited by this lot, as what I've read of these authors has been excellent. Gyula Krúdy of Hungary is one of the greats--his The Adventures of Sindbad and Sunflower are wonderful. Gregor von Rezzori, from what is now the Ukraine, wrote the amazing Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (this and Sunflower are both available in beautiful editions from NYRB). If you can handle 200- or 300-page paragraphs, Thomas Bernhard is your man. Karel Čapek is one of my favourite writers, and War with the Newts is probably his best book--an absurdist science-fiction masterpiece in which genetically engineered humanoid newts go from being humanity's slaves to cheerfully and politely lowering all of the continents into the oceans in order to make the world better for themselves.

As for E. M. Cioran, here's a bit of his cheerful philosophy, from 'The Trouble with Being Born': "Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy."

Here are those two NYRBs I mentioned...