Karl Kraus' The Last Days of Mankind

       2015 has been a pretty good year for re- or more-complete translations of important authors' works. Among others, we've had:

• Another The Tale of Genji translation (Dennis Washburn's; see the W.W.Norton publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)
  
  
• Finally, the Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector (see the New Directions publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)
  
  
• And The Complete Works of Primo Levi (see the Liveright publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)

       Another title that might arguably be a contender for most-significant, previously-only-semi-available translation published this year is The Last Days of Mankind, in its first unabridged translation (by Fred Bridgham and Edward Timms), due out next month from Yale University Press (in their marvelous Margellos World Republic of Letters-series); see their publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       I haven't seen the new Genji or the Levi (sigh) -- both of which were already mostly or entirely available in some form in English -- but I just got my copy of The Last Days of Mankind and it does look very nice indeed. There's also no doubt that it's been long overdue -- yes, you could make do with the previous abridged version, but this massive play (just to give you an idea: the listing of dramatis personae covers 26 pages ...) really can only be fully appreciated (if that's the right word) in it's incredible entirety.
       Coming close on the heels of Jonathan Franzen's The Kraus Project one hopes there's enough lingering interest to get this the attention and circulation it deserves.
       In any case: great work from Yale University Press and the Margellos World Republic of Letters in seeing this project through.