Welcome to Unravel Books!

We are a fierce, heavily caffeinated independent publishing house with a very specific, slightly unhinged mission. We dig up the world’s most brilliant, long-forgotten foreign books and drag them (elegantly, of course) into the English language.

We do not do massive corporate synergy, and we certainly do not chase the latest algorithm-driven reading trends. Instead, we raid the literary attics of history so you never have to.

Our Philosophy (or: Why We Love Dead Authors)

At Unravel Books, we have a type. We like our authors brilliant, international, and most importantly, no longer with us.

We specialize exclusively in works that have happily aged into the public domain. What can we say? Dead authors are incredibly easy to work with. They never miss a deadline, they do not demand a larger trailer on the book tour, and they absolutely never complain about the font we chose for the cover.

We seek out the international blockbusters of yesteryear. We are talking about 19th-century French thrillers, obscure Italian romances, and Scandinavian mysteries that kept people up past their bedtimes a century ago. These were the bestsellers of their time, completely untranslated or long out of print in English, just sitting there gathering digital dust. We brush them off, untangle the linguistic knots, and give them a second life.

The Unravel Difference

Why read a modern book when you can read a 150-year-old book that feels brand new?

Big corporate publishers are out there chasing social media trends and managing delicate author egos. We prefer chasing ghosts in obscure European archives and working with creatives who have been delightfully quiet since 1904. While the mega-publishers are churning out books about modern anxiety, we are publishing books where the absolute biggest crisis is a missing telegram.

How the Magic Happens

Bringing a forgotten masterpiece back from the dead takes more than feeding it through a free internet translator and hoping for the best (we tried that once, and the results were legally actionable). It requires a delicate touch:

We scour global archives, obscure foreign libraries, and the deep web to find the absolute bangers of the 1800s and early 1900s. If a book caused a riot in Budapest in 1892, we want to know about it.

We are not afraid to use the lightning-fast power of AI for the initial heavy lifting of translation. But then our actual, brilliant human beings step in for the truly painful part. They meticulously and ruthlessly edit that robotic output to meet our absurdly high standards. Our editors expertly navigate archaic slang, untangle outdated idioms, and ensure the prose crackles in modern English without losing its vintage charm.

Finally, we package these literary survivors in gorgeous, modern covers. There is no stuffy, gold-leaf, leather-bound pretension here. We just make beautiful books that look as good on your nightstand as they do on your shelf.

A Gentle Disclaimer Regarding Our Dead, Problematic Authors

Let’s address the historical elephant in the room: some of the authors in our catalog were, by modern standards, absolute nightmares.

As you read, you may notice that a few of them were gloriously blasphemous, casually racist, enthusiastically imperialist, aggressively misogynistic, or just generally the kind of people who would be collectively canceled before breakfast on today’s Internet.

To be abundantly clear, we do not condone their personal views. However, we also don’t believe in censorship or book burning, partly on philosophical grounds, and partly because setting fire to our own inventory is a terrible business model.

We publish these works because we believe our readers are sophisticated enough to grasp the radical concept of linear time. We trust your ability to understand that these authors lived in vastly different eras, back when bathing was optional and human rights were largely considered a fun, experimental fringe theory.

If you find yourself boiling over with righteous indignation while reading, that is entirely fair and justified. We simply ask that you direct your fury exactly where it belongs: at the dead author.

If you feel the need to seek vengeance, we highly encourage you to write a strongly worded letter to their tombstone, yell at their dust, or organize a hostile séance. We are merely the messengers, doing our best to render a faithful, accurate translation of their deeply antiquated thoughts.

Join the Expedition

Whether you are an avid reader looking for something truly original, a history buff, or just someone who wants to sound incredibly cultured and worldly at your next dinner party (“Oh, you are reading that? I am currently enjoying a newly translated 1880s Dutch satire”), you have come to the right place.

Grab a bookmark, pull up a chair, and let’s unravel some history.