Understated and impressionistic, and consisting almost entirely of dialogue, The Garden Square is one of Marguerite Duras's finest novels, which she also adapted to the stage.

The Heretic of Soana is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of Gerhart Hauptmann, the recipient of the 1912 Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the most important exponents of German Naturalism.

Written when the author of Cain's Book was at the height of his creative powers and enjoying an increasing reputation in avant-garde literary circles, `The Holy Man' is here presented with `A Being of Distances', `Peter Pierce' and `A Meeting', stories which similarly tackle themes of loneliness and disenfranchisement."

When Mathias, a travelling watch salesman, returns after many years to the island of his birth, a young girl is found dead on the rocks. As Mathias makes an increasingly tense recapitulation of his movements on the day of the event, tiny details slowly and inexorably accumulate.

First published in 1939, a few years before his most influential works in theatre and philosophy, The Wall was Sartre's first and only collection of short fiction.

First published in 1939 to little fanfare, Tropisms was ahead of its time and finally received the recognition it deserved when it was republished in 1957 at the height of the nouveau roman movement, of which it is now considered a precursor.