Joseph Roth, whose many novels included The Radetsky March, was one of the most seductive, disturbing, and enigmatic writers of the twentieth century. Born in the Habsburg Empire in what is now Ukraine, and dying in Paris in 1939, he was a perpetual displaced person, a traveler, a prophet, a compulsive liar, and a man who covered his tracks.

In this revealing ‘psycho-geography’, Dennis Marks makes a journey through the eastern border­lands of Europe to uncover the truth about Roth’s lost world. The result is a riveting and involving documentary that reunites Roth with his creative and spiritual landscape.

Prize-winning author Jonathan Keates has a secret passion: collecting vintage guidebooks. These Victorian volumes contain an entire archeology of cultural loss and longing as Keates takes us on a poignant, enlightening, and at times hilarious tour of that mysterious country, the past.

The great Victorian William Morris was fascinated by Iceland, which inspired him to write one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw follows in his footsteps, combining excerpts from his Icelandic writings with her own eye-witness response to the country and creates a highly original meditation – part memoir, part prose poem, part criticism, part travelogue.

‘At once a travel narrative, an allegorical journey, a withering comment on State-Building, a humanist philosophy of life, a preparation for death and a prophecy of resurrection (both for Armenia and for himself), this breathtaking, elliptical prose first appeared in the Soviet magazine Zvezda in 1933. Journey was the last piece Mandelstam saw published, and it takes its place among the outstanding masterpieces of twentieth century literature’ — Bruce Chatwin

This edition also includes the companion-piece, 'Conversation about Dante', ‘Osip Mandelstam’s astonishing fantasia on poetic creation’ (Seamus Heaney).

Richard Sennett has spent an intellectual lifetime exploring how humans live in cities. This pair of essays explores displacement in the metropolis through two vibrant historical moments: mid-nineteenth-century Paris, with its community of political exiles, and Renaissance Venice, where state-imposed restrictions on “outsider” groups – including prostitutes as well as Jews – had surprising cultural consequences.

A gathering of artful essays by one of Poland’s most translated post-war writers is here brought to a new audience. Poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artistic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland. These sixteen essays reveal Herbert’s discriminating artistic eye and poetic sensibility, one that revels in irony, humour, and a satirist’s appreciation of the absurd.