The great independent publisher Melville House is celebrating the first decade of its extraordinary life. What I love about Melville is its broad reach: it publishes journalism, fiction, translations, science fiction, poetry, philosophy, graphic novels, an international crime series, and history, all without sacrificing an inch in literary quality and fine taste. Melville makes a point of elevating the work of overlooked artists, both living and historical, and has discovered its fair share of significant emerging authors. As well: it makes brilliant use of design for both its books and website. Among the reads you can thank Melville for are:
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber
- The Lake - Banana Yoshimoto, tr. Michael Emmerich (my review)
- The Art of the Novella series, including Fanfarlo by Charles Baudelaire and The Lifted Veil by George Eliot
- The Collected Stories - Heinrich Boll, tr. Leila Vennewitz and Breon Mitchell
- Is Journalism Worth Dying For? Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya, tr. Arch Tait
- After Midnight - Irmgard Keun, tr. Anthea Bell
- Nairobi Heat - Mukoma wa Ngugi
- A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial - H.L. Mencken
- The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits - Lewis Carroll
- The Castle in Transylvania - Jules Verne, tr. Charlotte Mandell
The couple that founded the Brooklyn-based Melville House -- one of whom is Dennis Loy Johnson, who has long written the Moby Lives blog -- are profiled here. Neither of them had any background in publishing before they launched head-first into this venture, though they each brought a wealth of passionate literary training to the table. This year, the publisher releases its 200th book: The Fallback Plan, a first novel by Leigh Stein.
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