A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the pursuit of happiness in America. Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

In this exuberantly praised book—a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner—David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.

Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles is the second book by D.J. Waldie, one of the most gifted writers on the American scene. As Patt Morrison notes in her foreword, "The suburb is America's lifeline and its punchline, and Waldie is its bard." Few observers can present the facts of everyday life with the texture and emotion of a symphony, the way Waldie does. A breathtaking progression from his much-celebrated book Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, Where We Are Now is a compilation of Waldie's most intriguing recent works and an exploration of the meaning of place in Los Angeles, long regarded as the most placeless of American cities.

Since its publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s. An intensely realized and wholly original memoir about the way in which a place can shape a life, Holy Land is ultimately about the resonance of choices—how wide a street should be, what to name a park—and the hopes that are realized in the habits of everyday life.

In Europe Central, Vollmann presents a mesmerizing series of intertwined paired stories that compare and contrast the moral decisions made by various figures—some famous, some infamous, some unknown—associated with the warring authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century. He conjures up two generals, one Russian and one German, who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons and with different results. Another pairing tells of two heroes—a female Russian partisan martyred at the beginning of World War II and a young German man who joins the SS in order to reveal its secrets and halt its crimes. Several stories concern the complex and elusive Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the Stalinist assaults against his work and life; also explored are the fates of artists and poets such as Käthe Kollwitz, Anna Akhmatova, and the documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen. Europe Central is another high-wire act of fiction by a writer of prodigious talent.

In 1982, the young William Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, until he'd saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan, where he wanted to join the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets. The resulting book wasn't published until 1992, and Library Journal rated it: "The wrong book written at the wrong time . . . With the situation in Afghanistan rapidly heading toward resolution . . . libraries may safely skip this."

Thirty years later—and with the United States still mired in the longest war of its history—it's time for a reassessment of Vollmann's heartfelt tale of idealism and its terrifying betrayals. An alloy of documentary and autobiographical elements characteristic of Vollmann's later nonfiction, An Afghanistan Picture Show is not a work of conventional reportage; instead, it's an account of a subtle and stubborn consciousness grappling with the limits of will and idealism imposed by violence and chaos.

Twenty years after its initial publication, The Good Negress continues to be an important part of the literary canon, as relevant and necessary as ever. Set in 1960s Detroit, the novel centers around Denise Palms, who leaves her grandmother’s home in rural Virginia to reunite with her mother, stepfather, and older brothers. As a black teenage girl, Denise is given scarce opportunity beyond cooking, cleaning, and raising her mother’s baby. But an idealistic, demanding teacher opens Denise’s eyes to a future she has never considered, and soon she begins to question the limits of the life prescribed to her. With lyrical, evocative prose, A. J. Verdelle captures Denise’s journey from adolescence to womanhood as she navigates the tension between loyalty and independence, and between circumstance and desire. The Good Negress is an unforgettable debut—simultaneously the portrait of a family and a glimpse into an era of twentieth-century America.

From the acclaimed author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, The Guru of Love is the engrossing story of a fevered love triangle set in contemporary Nepal.

Ramchandra, a quiet math teacher, reluctantly enters into an adulterous relationship, and soon his double lives disastrously converge. When Goma, his wife by arranged marriage, learns of his affair, she demands that his mistress move into their small quarters. Unable to dissuade her, Ramchandra finds his desires and fears living side by side. Goma proves to be far shrewder than she seems, entering into a surprising alliance with his mistress. And Ramchandra finds himself trapped—both in his house and in his city, Kathmandu, a crowded place where secrets are impossible to keep and family matters dictate. Ultimately, his only escape is to let go of someone he loves. Absorbing, sexy, and psychologically acute, The Guru of Love radiates compassion and rare insight.

From the first Nepali author writing in English to be published in the West, Arresting God in Kathmandu brilliantly explores the nature of desire and spirituality in a changing society. With the assurance and unsentimental wisdom of a long-established writer, Upadhyay records the echoes of modernization throughout love and family. Here are husbands and wives bound together by arranged marriages but sometimes driven elsewhere by an intense desire for connection and transcendence. In a city where gods are omnipresent, where privacy is elusive and family defines identity, these men and women find themselves at the mercy of their desires but at the will of their society. Psychologically rich and astonishingly acute, Arresting God in Kathmandu introduces a potent new voice in contemporary fiction.

Edited by Askold Melnyczuk and the poety panel of AGNI magazine, Take Three: 2 is the second in an important annual series designed to launch the work of new poets. Includes poems by Suzanne Qualls, Susan Aizenberg, and Mark Turpin.