NYRB Classic Ebooks: A Baker's Dozen

We now have thirteen books from the NYRB Classics available as electronic books. Where can you buy them? Among other places, Amazon's Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Borders, Books on Board, and the Sony Reader store. As independent booksellers begin selling and supporting ebooks in their own stores, you should see our books there as well.

The same territorial restrictions that apply to our print books apply to ebooks, so if you can't buy a given print book where you live, then you won't be able to purchase that book in an electronic edition either. When possible, we'll be releasing ebooks on the same day as the print edition goes on sale. Meanwhile we're working our way through digitizing our backlist titles for which we have electronic rights.

 

Wish Her Safe at Home
Stephen Benatar
introduction by John Carey

"Perhaps all this was slightly fanciful but is there anything much wrong with that?"

 

A Meaningful Life
L. J. Davis
introduction by Jonathan Lethem

"'You're out of your mind,' said his wife. 'I can't imagine what's gotten into you. I categorically will not move to Brooklyn, and that's final. What part of Brooklyn?'"

 

Hard Rain Falling
Don Carpenter
introduction by George Pelecanos

"Billy stood, trembling with rage and relief, and watched the cop amble back to the bar, where he picked up a half-empty glass of beer and drank from it. God damn you, Billy thought, you rotten cop motherfucking bastard!"

 

The Jokers
Albert Cossery
introduction by James Buchan

 "'Violence will never get to the bottom of this absurd world.... That’s just what these tyrants want: for you to take them seriously. To answer violence with violence shows that you take them seriously, that you believe in their justice and their authority, and it only builds them up. But I’m cutting them down.'”

 

The One-Straw Revolution
Masanobu Fukuoka
preface by Wendell Berry
introduction by Frances Moore Lappé

 "'How about not doing this? How about not doing that?'—that was my way of thinking. I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no need to plow, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make compost, no need to use insecticide."

 

The Siege of Krishnapur
J.G. Farrell
introduction by Pankaj Mishra

"'I should go so far as to say that in the long run a superior civilization such as ours is irresistible. By combining our advances in science and in morality we have so obviously found the best way of doing things. Truth cannot be resisted! Er, that’s to say, not successfully.'”

 

Troubles
J.G. Farrell
introduction by John Banville

"The Major only glanced at the newspaper these days, tired of trying to comprehend a situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches. Why should one bother with the details: the raids for arms, the shootings of policemen, the intimidations? What could one learn from the details of chaos?"

 

Everything Flows
Vasily Grossman
translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and Anna Aslanyan

"Time worked unhurriedly, conscientiously. First the man was expelled from life, to reside instead in people’s memories. Then he lost his right to residence in people’s memories, sinking down into their subconscious minds and jumping out at someone only occasionally, like a jack-in-the-box, frightening them with the unexpectedness of his sudden, momentary appearances."

 

The Road
Vasily Grossman
translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and Olga Mukovnikova

"How is one to convey the grace of a slender apple tree bearing its first pale heavy apple, the grace of a young bird raising its first fledglings, the grace of a young roe deer that has just borne a fawn? The helplessness—the new motherhood—of a girl, of a little girl, still almost a child.
    "After The Sistine Madonna one can no longer refer to this special grace as ineffable or mysterious."

 

A High Wind in Jamaica
Richard Hughes
introduction by Francine Prose

"In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.
    "It is true they look human—but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys."

 

Skylark
Dezso Kosztolányi
introduction by Péter Esterházy

"Sitting on the terrace sipping beer, the afternoon clientele of the Széchenyi Café looked up from their newspapers and stared at Skylark. Not disrespectfully, just the way they always did: with a look of grey, benevolent sympathy, lined in red with a certain malevolent pleasure."

 

Sunflower
Gyula Krúdy
introduction by John Lukacs

"Far away in a Hungarian village Eveline’s nanny, as usual, laid out the Tarot first thing in the morning.
  "The ancient crone squatting on the floor suddenly pointed at a figure that had long been absent from the lay of the cards.
  “'A traveler’s approaching,' she said, and Eveline trembled like a windblown leaf."

 

Stoner
John Williams
introduction by John McGahern

"He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been."

Comments

[Sara]

D: Well, long before we made it an ebook, there had been various pirated editions floating around the Internet. We hope that now people who live in areas not well served by bookstores with imported books will have another means of accessing it. Fukuoka himself moved the book from a very small publisher to a larger Japanese one when he had the chance. He wanted his book to be out there and easy to get. So an ebook seems in keeping with that desire.

[d]

I can't really wrap my mind around the idea of One Straw Revolution as an ebook!