René Crevel (1900-1935), a bisexual communist who suffered from tuberculosis, was one of the most important surrealist authors, a true genius, and possibly the best writer of surrealist fiction, and no other of his works of fiction is more surreal than Are You All Crazy?-originally published in 1929 and here presented for the first time in English in a superb translation by Sue Boswell. In this feverish, full-speed-ahead novel of out-and-out madness, we meet a redhead who gives birth to a blue child, hear the naughty song of the pigtail-pullers, visit the Sexual Institute of Dr Optimus Cerf-Mayer, attend an eonism séance, and witness a fifty-kilo rat disembowelling a fakir. Are You All crazy? is a subversive masterpiece and a work of deep psychological interest, which, although puzzling in the utmost in its excesses of satirical bravado, certainly must be acknowledged to be one of the great European novels.
Who is he? What is his real name? Is he a reincarnation, a time-traveller, or someone made from chopped up DNA on a USB stick?In Surrender to a Stranger, British cult author Jeremy Reed offers a Burroughsesque Elizabethan drama in the super-exposure of contemporary London streets, in which our mysterious hero, Mr. W.H., along with a queer coterie of characters, soak up the ambience of sexy story telling. A daring and provocative novel of poetic brilliance, Surrender to a Stranger is a glitter-worded Marlovian comedo-tragedy in which every sentence is written as if it has been lived.
The Zaffre Book of Occult Fiction, the third volume of the books of occult fiction of many colours, brings together twenty-one tales, dating from 1908-1937, from the occult revival of the British Isles. Including both well-known figures, such as Dion Fortune and Algernon Blackwood, and lesser-known practitioners, such as Ethel Archer and the eccentric Prince Immanuel of Jerusalem, the present instalment is sure to fall within the sphere of beatific approval of not only seekers, adherents and occult enthusiasts, but also Masters and Ascendants. Containing a varied and luxuriant array of stories, about visions and hauntings, mystical agencies and seers, The Zaffre Book of Occult Fiction, edited by Brendan Connell, is an indispensable addition to any library of the supernatural and occult.
The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, here presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the most unusual works of Charles Nodier, and can readily be seen as a remote precursor of Alfred Jarry's "pataphysics," Guillaume Apollinaire's "surrealism" and Dadaism. Originally published in 1830, more than a hundred years before the publication of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Nodier's novel, like the latter, is a highly avant-garde work of dream fiction. It is deliberately incoherent, and in places deliberately incomprehensible, but its incoherence is never without an underlying purpose and an underlying schema, partly because it takes for granted the thesis that the apparent incoherence, inconsequentiality and incomprehensibility of real dreams must have an underlying purpose, however arcane, and an underlying schema, however bizarre-and that expeditions in literary surrealism are valuable processes of exploration, capable of offering valuable and unique rewards. It is, in its own peculiar fashion, a masterpiece of intelligence, wit and literary artistry. This edition of The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles supplements the title novel with three related texts: "On the Phenomena of Sleep," an essay on dreams, and two biographical fantasies, "Polichinelle," and "The Bibliomaniac."
Raun, certainly one of the great works of Futurist drama, if not the greatest, was written by Ruggero Vasari from 1926 to 1927 before being published in 1932. Here, presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brendan and Anna Connell, and with an introduction by Maria Elena Versari, is a dystopian masterpiece that is as relevant today as it was when it was originally composed. Rivaling, in its own way, the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, Raun is a fully-equipped tragedy in which, in the Era of Machines, eugenics are used to dehumanize a society obsessed with technical achievement and which is willing to sacrifice all in order to reach ever more exalted heights.
"These inappropriately pleasant poems about TikTok, necromantic sex and the pseudo-Platonic theurgy of Iamblichus are written with great insincerity. Nothing meaningful or emotional is confessed and there is no relatable trauma. The language is grotesque and artificial and has clearly not been submitted to a workshop for the appropriate craftsmanship. The book is not even very long. The overall tenacity, though, is SEARING. Reader, be careful not to burn your fingertips. WOW!!!" --Efron Hirsch, expert entrepreneur, business consultant and author of numerous successful Kindle singles
Presented here for the first time in English, in translations by Brian Stableford, the current volume contains two novels of the occult by Gilbert-Augustin Thierry (1843-1915), which were originally published in serial form in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The first, Stigma (1888), the author's masterpiece, is a horror story on two levels, not merely in terms of the relentless suffering inflicted on the characters, but also in the subtler sense in which it gradually undermines the identification that the reader initially assumes, automatically, with the narrator-a sympathy that is gradually and clinically drained away to the extent that he too, like every other character in the story, is stigmatized as a victim of universal human corruption, an existential condition in which the "help" rendered by a quasi-Jansenist God is as horrifically ironic as that rendered by his deluded minions. A similar track is followed in the second novel, The Pompeiian Fresco to a scathing coda-which, juxtaposed and coupled with the melodramatic climax-raises the question of how, in the hands of an honest writer, stories can and ought to end, once Amour and Faith have both been discounted as realistic possibilities of happiness.
"Beast or poet? Monster or moralist? Charlatan or magician? Genius or madman?" These are the questions William Seabrook, the great writer on such things as zombies and witchcraft, posed when, in weekly instalments published in various American newspapers between April 1st, 1923 and June 17th, 1923, he presented the public with a startling exposé on his close friend Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist who was "one of the most complex characters in the modern world, and one of the most extraordinary in human history." Under the title of Astounding Secrets of the Devil-Worshippers' Mystic Love Cult, the series promised to reveal the intimate details of Crowley's unholy rites, his power over women, his drug orgies, his mysticisms, and his startling adventures around the globe as "the Beast of the Apocalypse." Presented here for the first time in book form, this remarkable group of chapters, which reads like a decadent novel, not only delivers on the advertised goods, but provides an intimate revelation of the man whose creed was "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
Edgar Saltus was one of the great decadent writers of the United States-possibly the greatest. Set amidst glamourous Gilded Age New York, his fiction tells of the secret cruelties and obsessions eating away at the souls of socialites, businessmen and artists alike, as increasing wealth and opulence only drive them further from reality in their quest for stimulation. Inspired by eastern mysticism and the philosophy of Arthur -Schopenhauer, Saltus makes mock of the human tendency to interpret the world according to our desires, and the great disillusionment which often follows when this perception conflicts with reality. The Princess of the Sun and Other Decadent Stories collects together a selection of Edgar Saltus's brilliant tales from newspapers, books and unpublished manuscripts; alternating between Poesque mysteries, sardonic society romances, and tales of decay and delirium, these pieces show their author as a masterful practitioner of the conte cruel, executed in an epigrammatic style so refined that one critic even asserted that "style is a synonym for Saltus."
"And me, what have I done? I had the age of their illusions and their desires made me young. Beautiful in their amour, I smiled at their dream and my smile protected them against death by smiling at them. Today, the number of years forgotten in my presence and the weight of their regret is overwhelming me, their awakening has aged me by a thousand years, and now I am condemned to live for a thousand years, hideous and sad, the life that each of them might have lived down here."-Jean Lorrain, "Oriane Vanquished"Gathered together in the present volume, edited and translated from the French by Brian Stableford, are seventeen tales of femmes fatales, many of which have never appeared in English before. From the pioneering "The Amorous Revenant" by Théophile Gautier, to Jules Lermina's horrific "The Titaness," this significant sampling of those seductively attractive females who lead men into problematic positions will be sure to appeal to connoisseurs of dark fairy tales, fin-de-siècle decadence, and those who simply revel in the frissons offered by this irresistible antiquarian subgenre.
The Zinzolin Book of Occult Fiction, the first in a planned series of books of occult fiction of many colours, brings together twenty-two tales, dating from 1888-1911, from the occult revival of the British Isles. Including both well-known figures, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Aleister Crowley, and lesser-known talents, such as Helen Fagg and the mysterious Zuresta, this inaugural volume is sure to bring diversion and illumination to both interested acolyte and erudite mahatma alike. Containing a varied and rich array of stories, about dreams and séances, visionaries and madmen, The Zinzolin Book of Occult Fiction, edited by Brendan Connell, is an indispensable addition to any library of the supernatural and occult.
Petrus Borel (1809-1859), known as "The Lycanthrope" was one of the most intriguing figures of the Romantic movement and that group of writers who were part of the frénétique school of literature, which revelled in excesses, dark themes, and ghoulish situations. Praised by many great names, including Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Tzara and André Breton, the eccentric Borel, though primarily known for his verse and his immoral tales, also wrote a good many bizarre pieces for various periodicals, one of the most interesting of these being The Treasure of the Arcueil Cavern, appearing here for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Colin Boswell, suitably enhanced by scholarly footnotes. The main theme of the novella is, as the title states, hidden treasure and as we are told in the story, "nothing is more attractive to the human mind than the story of riches mysteriously hidden underground." He refers in the story to the widespread belief that the Moors, as they retreated from Spain, had left behind hidden treasure. In England there is a widespread belief that in 1216 the baggage train containing the treasure of Bad King John, whilst crossing the estuary on the east coast known as The Wash, had been engulfed by the incoming tide. More than eight hundred years later people are still hoping to find this treasure and there is at least one person who thinks they know where it is.Included in the present volume is a second piece, "Gottfried Wolfgang", a delicious conte cruel which also appears here for the first time in English.
Jules Janin (1804-1874) was one of the major exponents of the frénétique school of literature, which reveled in excesses, dark themes, and ghoulish situations, and The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman, originally published in 1829, and long out of print in English, is certainly the most frénétique of his novels-and, in fact, one of the greatest landmarks left behind by that school as a whole. A cruel story of great artistry, at once sly, desperate, and immensely tragic, The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman, though filled with quips and dark humor, is a blood-curdling exercise in literary flamboyance that is no less devastating today than when it was first released.
"In this collection of fanciful stories, a large number of which might be said to fall into the category of 'droll horror,' the reader is treated to phantom hunts and freaks, bizarre happenings and risky bets, in a hearty buffet of both dreams and nightmares. Many of the entries, such as 'The Battle of the Dead,' which concerns a combat among skeletons, feature military situations, which might lend a clue as to the author's background"--Back cove
Likely the most thorough collection of English-language Decadent poetry to date, The World in Violet, edited by Brendan Connell, brings together 175 poems by 73 poets, in a tour de force of aesthetical excess. Including the works of well-known figures such as Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley, as well as lesser-known geniuses such as May Kendall and Edmund John, the volume is a "must have" for both apprentice and connoisseur alike, exploring the bizarre byways of madness and terror and the fields of forbidden love, where flaming gems sit and flowers of evil grow, and where beauty is to be found in the ripple of the cobra or the depths of sin.
"Originally published as a 64-part feuilleton serial in Le Journal between 31 July 1910 and 3 October 1910."--Back cover.
When Tom Andersley returns to his family in Yorkshire after World War I, he is a changed man. Unable to connect with others, he becomes obsessed with working on experiments in cross-breeding fruit trees. Then an old friend, Lawrence Oates, visits him. The odd thing is, everyone believes Lawrence died in an Antarctic blizzard years ago. Perhaps more odd, Lawrence explains that he was preserved by aliens--aliens now under attack from mysterious adversaries. And they need Tom's help and his expertise in plants in order to win their war.
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