Alta L. Price

by Alberto Giacometti

published May 2024

Alberto Giacometti (1901–66), one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century art, was close to his family—particularly his parents, Giovanni and Annetta Giacometti—in their native Swiss village of Stampa. Regardless of his whereabouts, he wrote to his parents at least once a week to keep them up to date on everything important to him. Their entire correspondence comprises more than one thousand letters.

For the first time, excerpts from this body of documents are published together in one volume. They reveal fascinating insights into this unique family relationship and the core issues of Giacometti's life and work as an artist. The letters describe his artistic education in Switzerland and early years in Paris: his studies at the art academy; encounters with the avant-garde; and his joining with and later turning away from the Surrealist movement. They also highlight his search for a new figuration between 1935 and 1946. This book provides entirely new knowledge about the evolution and circumstances of one of modernity's great artists.

by Giorgio Agamben

published November 2023

An engaging collection of late-life reflections and quick thoughts, a book unlike any other Agamben book.

What can the senses of an attentive philosopher see, hear, and learn that can, in turn, teach us about living better lives? Perhaps it's less a matter of asking what and more a matter of asking how. These latest reflections from Italy's foremost philosopher form a sort of travelogue that chronicles Giorgio Agamben's profound interior journey. Here, with unprecedented immediacy, Agamben shares his final remarks, late-life observations, and reflections about his life that flashed before his eyes. What did he see in that brief flash? What did he stay faithful to? What remains of all those places, friends, and teachers?

by Juli Zeh

published October 2023

Included in World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations 2023 list

Fleeing stay-at-home orders in the big city, Dora and her dog move to the countryside to sit out the pandemic. She knows that Bracken, a village in the middle of nowhere, isn't the idyll most city dwellers dream of, but she's desperate for space and a change of scene. The quaint old house she's saved up for needs work, weeds have taken over the yard, and her skinhead neighbor fits all the stereotypes. Just what is Dora really looking for? Distance from her boyfriend Robert, whose climate activism has crossed into obsession? Refuge from her inner turmoil? Clarity on how the whole world got so messed up? As Dora tries to keep her demons in check, unexpected things start happening all around her. Juli Zeh's epic new novel explores our present predicaments, biases, weaknesses, and fears, but—above all—it reveals the strengths that come to light when we dare to be human.

by Giorgio Agamben

published March 2023

One of Europe's greatest living philosophers, Giorgio Agamben, analyzes the life and work of one of Europe's greatest poets, Friedrich Hölderlin.

What does it mean to inhabit a place or a self? What is a habit? And, for human beings, doesn't living mean—first and foremost—inhabiting? Pairing a detailed chronology of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin's years of purported madness with a new examination of texts often considered unreadable, Giorgio Agamben's new book aims to describe and comprehend a life that the poet himself called habitual and inhabited.

Hölderlin's life was split neatly in two: his first 36 years, from 1770 to 1806; and the 36 years from 1807 to 1843, which he spent as a madman holed up in the home of Ernst Zimmer, a carpenter. The poet lived the first half of his existence out and about in the broader world, relatively engaged with current events, only to then spend the second half entirely cut off from the outside world. Despite occasional visitors, it was as if a wall separated him from all external events and relationships. For reasons that may well eventually become clear, Hölderlin chose to expunge all character—historical, social, or otherwise—from the actions and gestures of his daily life. According to his earliest biographer, he often stubbornly repeated, 'nothing happens to me'. Such a life can only be the subject of a chronology—not a biography, much less a clinical or psychological analysis. Nevertheless, this book suggests that this is precisely how Hölderlin offers humanity an entirely other notion of what it means to live. Although we have yet to grasp the political significance of his unprecedented way of life, it now clearly speaks directly to our own.

by Mithu Sanyal

published October 2022 • UK/IE/EU edition

longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

'A provocative and knotty debut.' The New York Times

Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a doctoral student who blogs about race with the help of Hindu goddess Kali, is in awe of Saraswati, her superstar postcolonial and race studies professor. But Nivedita's life and sense of self are upturned when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Hours before she learns the truth Nivedita praises her tutor in a radio interview, which calls into question her own reputation and ignites an angry backlash among her peers and online community.

In her thought-provoking, genre-bending debut, Mithu Sanyal collages the commentary of real-life intellectuals, blogs, articles, race theory, academic warfare and coming-of-age drama. A darkly comedic tour de force, Identitti showcases the outsized power of social media in the current debates around identity politics and the power of claiming your own voice.

Mithu Sanyal is a cultural scientist, journalist and author of two academic books Vulva (Wagenbach, 2009) and Rape (Verso, 2019). 

'A writer at the height of her powers.' Laurie Penny, author of Sexual Revolution.

'From the first page, I knew Sanyal was going to take me to filthy, funny, strange places. She didn't disappoint. Buy the ticket and take the wild ride as Identitti tries to make sense of race, belonging and truth.' Jarred McGinnis, author of The Coward

by Mithu Sanyal

published July 2022

Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a well-known blogger and doctoral student is in awe of her supervisor—superstar postcolonial and race studies South-Asian professor Saraswati. But her life and sense of self are turned upside down when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Nivedita's praise of her professor during a radio interview just hours before the news breaks—and before she learns the truth—calls into question her own reputation as a young activist.

Following the uproar, Nivedita is forced to reflect on the key moments in her life, when she doubted her identity and her place in the world. As debates on the scandal rage on social media, blogs, and among her closest friends, Nivedita's assumptions are called into question as she reconsiders the lessons she learned from her adored professor.

In her thought-provoking, genre-bending debut, Mithu Sanyal solicited the contributions and commentary of public intellectuals as if Saraswati were a real person. A darkly comedic tour de force, Identitti showcases the outsized power of social media in the current debates about identity politics and the power of claiming your own voice.

by Esther Maria Magnis

published March 2022

With or Without Me is an unsparing and eloquent critique of religion. Yet Esther Maria Magnis's frustration is merely the beginning of a tortuous journey toward faith—one punctuated by personal losses retold with bluntness and immediacy. "If God is love," she writes, "then it's a kind of love I do not understand."

by Juli Zeh

published November 2021

finalist for the 2022 PEN Translation Prize and Helen & Kurt Wolff Prize

When a family vacation turns into a nightmare

Lanzarote on New Year's Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children—yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this compelling and darkly psychological novel, Juli Zeh tells the breathtaking story of two small children who, in the middle of a holiday in paradise, end up in hell and live to tell the tale.

by Aldo Novarese

published November 2020

Aldo Novarese (1920–1995) achieved worldwide renown for his extraordinary typefaces. Alfa-Beta reviews the evolution of writing systems and typography from their advent up to the publication of the first edition in 1964. The book showcases a very specific point of view: it is one of very few works on the history of type originally written in Italian, and one of even fewer to have been written by a practicing designer rather than a historian or academic. This edition features four new introductory essays contextualizing the book's original release, highlighting its current relevance, and describing the editorial logic guiding the reissue and its translation.

by Alexander Kluge

published September 2020

Alexander Kluge's work has long grappled with the Third Reich and its aftermath, and the extermination of the Jews forms its gravitational center. Kluge is forever reminding us to keep our present catastrophes in perspective—'calibrated'—against this historical monstrosity. Kluge's newest work is a book about bitter fates, both already known and yet to unfold. Above all, it is about the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. These 48 stories of justice and injustice are dedicated to the memory of Fritz Bauer, determined fighter for justice and district attorney of Hesse during the Auschwitz Trials. 'The moment they come into existence, monstrous crimes have a unique ability,' Bauer once said, 'to ensure their own repetition.' Kluge takes heed, and in these pages reminds us of the importance of keeping our powers of observation and memory razor sharp.

edited by Ilan Stavans; translation of Jhumpa Lahiri's "Letter to Italy"

published August 25, 2020

This anthology takes its title from the last line of Dante's Inferno, when the poet and his guide emerge from hell to once again behold the beauty of the heavens. In that spirit, the stories, essays, poems, and artwork in this collection—from beloved authors including Jhumpa Lahiri, Mario Vargas Llosa, Eavan Boland, Daniel Alarcón, Jon Lee Anderson, Rivka Galchen, Claire Messud, Ariel Dorfman, and many more—detail the harrowing experiences of life in the pandemic, while pointing toward a less isolated future. Together they comprise a profound global portrait of the defining moment of our time, and send a clarion call for solidarity across borders.
 

by Anna Goldenberg

published June 2020

A defiant memoir from contemporary Europe: In autumn 1942, Anna Goldenberg's great-grandparents and one of their sons are deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Hans, their elder son, survives by hiding in an apartment in the middle of Nazi-controlled Vienna. But this is no Anne Frank-like existence; teenage Hans passes time in the municipal library and buys standing room tickets to the Vienna State Opera. He never sees his family again. Goldenberg reconstructs this unique story in magnificent reportage. She also portrays Vienna's undying allure—although they tried living in the United States after World War Two, both grandparents eventually returned to the Austrian capital. The author, too, has returned to her native Vienna after living in New York herself, and her fierce attachment to her birthplace enlivens her engrossing biographical history. A probing tale of heroism, resilience, identity and belonging, marked by a surprising freshness as a new generation comes to terms with history's darkest era.

by Dana Grigorcea

published May 2019

Victoria has just recently moved from Zurich back to her hometown of Bucharest when the bank where she works is robbed. Put on leave so that she can process the trauma of the robbery, Victoria strolls around town. Each street triggers sudden visions as memories from her childhood under the Ceausescu regime begin to mix with the radically changed city and the strange world in which she now finds herself. As the walls of reality begin to crumble, Victoria and her former self cross paths with the bank robber and a rich cast of characters, weaving a vivid portrait of Romania and one woman's self-discovery.

by Martin Mosebach

published February 2019

In a carefully choreographed propaganda video released in February 2015, ISIS militants beheaded twenty-one orange-clad Christian men on a Libyan beach. Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach traveled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction. In twenty-one symbolic chapters, each preceded by a picture, Mosebach offers a travelogue of his encounter with a foreign culture and a church that has preserved the faith and liturgy of early Christianity. This book is also an account of the spiritual life of a Christian minority in an Arab country stretched between extremism and pluralism, between a rich biblical past and the shopping centers of New Cairo.

by Jost Hochuli

published April 2016

Typophiles Monograph, New Series No. 30. The essay was written as a preface to the publication Adrian Frutiger, son oeuvre typographique et ses écrits (Villeurbanne: Maison du livre, de l'image et du son, 1994), for which the German-language original was translated into French. The original German version appeared later that same year in Adrian Frutiger, Denken und Schaffen einer Typografie, released by the same publisher. Both publications were catalogs that accompanied the traveling retrospective exhibition of Frutiger's work. The essay now appears in English for the first time, translated by Alta L. Price, with a new afterword by the author, written for this new edition. The text is set in fourteen different types designed by Frutiger. Cover printed letterpress by Bradley Hutchinson. Designed by Maxim Zhukov.

by Jürgen Holstein et alia

published October 2015

Part reference compendium, part vintage visual feast for the eyes, this very particular cultural history is at once a testament to an irretrievable period of promise and a celebration of the ambition, inventiveness, and beauty of the book.

by Ariane Roth, Marina Schütz et alia 

published November 2015

Home to over 25,000 volumes on art, architecture, design, and photography, the Sitterwerk’s art library began with the bequest of book collector and connoisseur Daniel Rohner (1948–2007).

by Corrado Augias

published April 2014

Exploring his country's cities, history, and literature, cultural authority Corrado Augias elucidates its highs and lows: Michelangelo, but also the mafia; Pavarotti, but also Berlusconi; the debonair Milanese, but also the infamous captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. This is Italy, admired and reviled, a country that has guarded its secrets and confounded outsiders. Now, as its paradoxes are more evident than ever, the author poses the puzzling questions: how did it get this way? How can this peninsula be simultaneously the home of geniuses and criminals, the cradle of beauty and the butt of jokes?