1. Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

By Louis Begley (Yale UP, $24.00) I've come by my knowledge of the Dreyfus affair as, I suppose, have many of us a century and an ocean away, through Proust and his contemporaries. What we know, the

2. Finding a Form, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

By William Gass (Dalkey, $15.95) I know, I recommend far too many books that are themselves about writing and books. Let's have done with that, shall we? The title piece of this book is one of the o

3. Summertime, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

By J.M. Coetzee (Viking, $25.95) Coetzee has been working since Elizabeth Costello or earlier to Trollope the contemporary novel so hard it'll knock the jade right out of our eyes. If anything was lac

4. If I Were Another, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Poetry)

By Mahmoud Darwish (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28.00) After Mahmoud Darwish's recent death a number of books of his poetry and letters were issued by small presses. They are all worthwhile, I think

5. The Other City, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

By Michal Ajvaz (Dalkey Archive Press, $13.95) There are a couple of ways for a book to earn itself the sobriquet "Borgesian". One is to be slim, recursive and literary. The other is to feat

6. Active Boundaries, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Poetry)

By Michael Palmer (New Directions, $19.95) Michael Palmer is a poet of excellent range and precision, but these collected essays and lectures feel more like my dream of pub chatter; they're erudite,

7. Star Maker, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

By Olaf Stapledon (Wesleyan, $26.95) New rule: you haven't read science fiction until you've read Stapledon. His prose is a little dated feeling, but his imagination, his passion for inventing strange

8. On the Commerce of Thinking, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

By Jean-Luc Nancy (Fordham, $16.00) This is filthy stuff, erotica for booksellers and readers in general. "Oh Jean-Luc," you'll cry, "tell me more about the illegible! Yes, that's it,

9. Chronic City, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

By Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday, $27.00) It's difficult, sometimes, to read later work by an author who's written some of my favorite novels. Difficult, it seems, unless that author is Jonathan Lethem.

10. Anathem, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Neal Stephenson (Harper, $7.99)  This is your new favorite novel about pre-Socratic philosopher monks, kung-fu, and trans-dimensional colony ships.

11. Seven Tenths, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

by James Hamilton-Paterson (Europa, $16.00) This book is magnificent--one of the most sustained arguments for the vitality of literary non-fiction I ever hope to read. Hamilton-Paterson's topic here

12. Death in Spring, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Merce Rodoreda (Open Letter, $14.95) This book may have been written as a loose allegory of fascist Spain, but I love it for being the best depiction of my dreams--good and bad--that I've ever ha

13. Ghosts, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Cesar Aira (New Directions, $12.95) Cesar Aira doesn't write novels. No, he's perfected something new and brash -- small stories about small folks that are perfect in every detail but obviate tho

14. Dura, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Poetry)

by Myung Mi Kim (Nightboat, $14.95) When reactionaries and grandparents mock poetry this is the exact book they have in mind. It is dangerous; subversive, playful, dramatic and self-aware in equal p

15. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Written by: Kat
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton, $23.95) Daniyal Mueenuddin's linked stories offer intimate glimpses into the lives of people connected by an aging member of Pakistan's fading aristocracy. From servan

16. Unforgiving Years, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Victor Serge (NYRB Classics, $15.95) Serge's prose takes a moment to get used to, it's so full of roiling turmoil, drifting clots of yearning rising slowly in the dark mix. This novel, Serge

17. A Different Practice, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Poetry)

by Fredrik Nyberg (Ugly Duckling Presse, $14.00) This is the greatest book you will ever read about the summers you spent in Sweden as a child. Nyberg's poetics feel natural but not naturalistic,

18. Fast Ships, Black Sails, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, eds. (Nightshade, $14.95) If Harlan Ellison took a mouthful of dark rum and two tabs of sunshine and tongue kissed Robert Louis Stevenson, these are the sweaty, smo

19. A Book of Memories, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Péter Nádas (Picador, $18.00) An apotheosis of the novel.  Virtuosic.  Intimidating.  Pitiful.

20. Small Lives, Written by: Dustin
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Pierre Michon (Archipelago, $15.00) Michon is largely unknown in this country, despite his confident voice and Jamesian affection for his characters. This, his excellent first novel, gives us eig