Philip Roth’s Writers from the Other Europe was a Penguin paperback series he launched and served as general editor for, beginning in the mid-1970s and running until 1989. Its goal was to bring major Eastern European fiction to American readers, especially writers who were well known in their own countries but little known in the U.S. His interest in the series grew out of visits to Prague in 1972 and 1973. He was deeply moved by the plight of writers living under totalitarian regimes—authors who were often banned, imprisoned, or forced into menial labor while their work circulated only in samizdat (underground) form. Roth envisioned a series that would move beyond political curiosity and highlight these authors as literary masters rather than mere political dissidents. The series focused on the "Eastern Bloc," primarily featuring writers from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. The books were known for their distinctive paperback covers, which often featured e...