Originally published in 1968, The Secret Crypt is something of a cult classic in Mexican literature.
Elizondo's impassioned, breathless prose launches the reader into a labyrinth that is also a hall of mirrors. Here, we find a small group of characters who are part of an underground sect called Urkreis, one of whose aims is to discover the identity of the sect's founder, known only as "the Imagined." The identities of narrator, author, and characters blur into one another as the narrative moves between the two worlds of the novel and the author writing the novel--an unclassifiable masterpiece containing initiation rites, sacrificial murder, conspiracy, and delirium.
Originally published in 1968, The Secret Crypt is something of a cult classic in Mexican literature.
Elizondo's impassioned, breathless prose launches the reader into a…
During an atomic alarm in Barcelona in the year 2025, the thirty-year old hero takes refuge in a luxurious mansion in the mountains where he is put up, along with other guests, awaiting the outcome of the conflict. For the following seven days the residents of the mansion spend their spare time reading and taking walks, and, above all, telling stories to each other. The narrators (most of whom belong to the generation thirty years older than the hero's) are eight in number, and the stories they tell can be taken as autonomous ones, although, as the novel advances, it may soon be that when juxtaposed, they do indeed weave a web of intrigue about a family of bankers--a web that gradually involves some of the guests in the mansion.
As if Borges wrote The Decameron
During an atomic alarm in Barcelona in the year 2025, the thirty-year old hero takes refuge in a luxurious mansion in the mountains where he is…
Written under the name of his literary alter ego Anton Nigov, Tõnu Õnnepalu's Exercises is an unclassifiable work, part searingly honest confession, part keen-eyed journal of everyday reality in a foreign land, part writer's unsparing dialogue with himself as he stands on the threshold of two worlds: the cosmopolitan but alienating Paris he is about to depart and the "small culture" of his native Estonia.
Family histories and narratives of wartime and Soviet Estonia alternate with meditations on writing, reading, fiction, poetry and poets major and minor, personal and cultural geographies, time and the irremediable, life as the history of one's physical traumas, the islands where the author has lived and those which he dreams of visiting, and above all the existential condition of coming from a small country, whose melancholy landscapes and abandoned villages form the very cartography of the writer's self.
Written under the name of his literary alter ego Anton Nigov, Tõnu Õnnepalu's Exercises is an unclassifiable work, part searingly honest confession, part keen-eyed journal of…
The protagonist has Egyptian roots going back many generations: on her father s side, to the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492 when seven brothers of the Kastil family, from Castilla, landed on the Gaza coast after many trials and tribulations. Her mother s side goes back even further 3,000 years before that for she is a descendant of the only family that Jewish history has ignored: the one that said 'No' to Moses and stayed in Egypt. This family migrated to Israel in the 1950s and settled on a kibbutz, but they were soon expelled for Stalinism, and moved to Tel Aviv. Mixing historical and biographical facts, made-up legends plus other fictions and exaggerations, Castel-Bloom writes an unconventional saga of her family, the Kastils. As in other sagas, there are family meals and get-togethers, deaths and funerals, sayings and stories, and things that are not to be mentioned because they disgrace the family. But here these elements all slip and slide sideways into parody and the absurd."
The protagonist has Egyptian roots going back many generations: on her father s side, to the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492 when seven brothers of the Kastil family, from…
In "The Making of Americans" sets out to tell "a history of a Family's progress", radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of "The Making of Americans", and on America.
In "The Making of Americans" sets out to tell "a history of a Family's progress", radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and…
While "Whale" begins with Chunhee, a mysterious young brickmaker of imposing physicality who cannot speak, introduced a the Queen of Red Bricks, it quickly situates her story within a longer multi-generational saga composed of three parts. While we learn of Chunhee s tragic path to her becoming someone who makes bricks of the highest quality, the novel retraces the familial circumstances that shaped her. While poignant yet brutal, "Whale" is also a satire of how we the general public, mass media, even artists and writers tend to romanticize voiceless figures of history."
While "Whale" begins with Chunhee, a mysterious young brickmaker of imposing physicality who cannot speak, introduced a the Queen of Red Bricks, it quickly situates her story…
Eliza travels to Sydney to deal with the estate of her Aunt Dodge, and finds Maxine, a hitherto unknown cousin, occupying Dodge's apartment. When legal complications derail plans to live it up on their inheritance, the women's lives become consumed by absurd attempts to deal with Australian tax law, as well their own mounting boredom and squalor. The most astonishing debut novel of the decade, "Dodge Rose" calls to mind Henry Green in its skewed use of colloquial speech, Joyce in its love of inventories, and William Gaddis in its virtuoso lampooning of law, high finance, and national myth.
Eliza travels to Sydney to deal with the estate of her Aunt Dodge, and finds Maxine, a hitherto unknown cousin, occupying Dodge's apartment. When legal complications derail plans…
Ch’oe Yun’s Mannequin is a novel that reflects on the meaning of beauty and its many facets of existence. The beauty of the main character, Jini, is captured through a carefree imagination that describes it as “the music of the wind,” or something that can’t be described in words. Through the beauty that penetrates and captivates us in fleeting moments, the novel leads us to critically reflect on the question of what true beauty is in a world where people are captivated by the beauty of advertising models in a flood of new products. In that respect, Mannequin, as the title implies, is a sad allegory on a capitalistic society in which a woman’s body, artificial and standardized, becomes a product.
Ch’oe Yun’s Mannequin is a novel that reflects on the meaning of beauty and its many facets of existence. The beauty of the main character, Jini, is captured through a carefree…
This novel paints a fascinating portrait of bohemian culture in Estonia in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The "cavemen" in question are the regulars at the underground (both literally and figuratively) bar called "The Cave," including artists, musicians, writers, and philosophers, who escape the dreary Soviet reality "above" with vodka and high-minded discussion in their secret hideaway. The arrival of national independence upsets the balance of these dissidents' lifestyle, and the narrator recounts how each individual adapts to their newfound freedom. The Cavemen Chronicle presents an illuminating and thrilling look into life on the fringes of Soviet culture, both pre- and post perestroika, and is also a meditation on what it means to be an Estonian
This novel paints a fascinating portrait of bohemian culture in Estonia in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The "cavemen" in question are the regulars at the underground…
Tout ça, je me dis parfois, c’est la faute de l’océan. C’était à force qu’ils l’entendent, Colter, Shannon et Harry Dean, à force du fracas des vagues, de la colère que c’est. Ces trois-là, je les avais rencontrés le jour de mon arrivée ici, à Cannon Beach, dans cette petite ville du bout de l’Amérique, et presque chaque soir on se retrouvait au bar de Moses. Je les écoutais me raconter leur vie, et ça me liait à eux, d’une certaine façon. Je croyais que ça me liait à eux. Je me le faisais croire. Parce qu’au fond de moi, peut-être bien que je savais ce qui allait arriver. Mais est-ce qu’on sait ?
Tout ça, je me dis parfois, c’est la faute de l’océan. C’était à force qu’ils l’entendent, Colter, Shannon et Harry Dean, à force du fracas des vagues, de la colère que c’est. Ces…
Õnnepalu... goes further than Milan Kundera.... [his work] not only laughs at the dogma of the Soviet era, but also shows, by means of penetrating images, the commercialized mediocrity of the Western democracy. It unmasks the hypocrisy and superficiality of the mechanisms of power, including 'official' culture.
(World Literature Today)
Radio could be read - and this complex intricately structured novel demands rereading - as the story of how a man's attraction to a sympathetic younger man is impeded by his devotion to a sterile past...
(Paul Binding Times Literary Supplement)
Onnepalu draws the reader into a unique world that is at once demanding, rewarding, claustrophobic, frustrating, and ultimately heartbreaking.
(Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide)
[Radio] demonstrates a complex understanding of the human psyche.
(World Literature Today)
About the Author
Onnepalu (pen name Emil Tode). He received the Baltic Assembly Prize. He lives in Tallinn and on the Estonian Islan of Hiiumaa.
Review
Õnnepalu... goes further than Milan Kundera.... [his work] not only laughs at the dogma of the Soviet era, but also shows, by means of penetrating images, the…
"A book describes works conceived of but not realized by its author." Like Suicide and Autoportrait, Works is another of Eduoard Levé's bewitching reconceptions of what the novel can (or should) do. A list of 533 projects, beginning with its own description--both likely and unlikely, sober and ridiculous; some of which Levé later realized, most of which he did not-- Works ranks with the fiction of Georges Perec for its seemingly limitless, ingenious, and comical inventiveness. A lampoon of conceptual art--if not, indeed, an exemplar of its charms at their best-- Works is another piece in the puzzle of Levé's brief and fascinating life.
"A book describes works conceived of but not realized by its author." Like Suicide and Autoportrait, Works is another of Eduoard Levé's bewitching reconceptions of what the novel…
Eric Chevillard here seeks to clear up a persistent and pernicious literary misunderstanding: the belief that a novel's narrator must necessarily be a mouthpiece for his or her writer's own opinions. Thus, we are introduced to a narrator haunted by a deep loathing for cauliflower gratin (and by a no less passionate fondness for trout almondine), but his monologue has been helpfully and hilariously annotated in order to clarify all the many ways in which this gentleman and Eric Chevillard are nothing alike. Language and logic are pushed to their farthest extremes in one of Chevillard's funniest novels yet.
Eric Chevillard here seeks to clear up a persistent and pernicious literary misunderstanding: the belief that a novel's narrator must necessarily be a mouthpiece for his or her…
German Sadulaev's follow-up to his acclaimed I am a Chechen! is set in a twenty-first century Russia, phantasmagorical and violent. A bitingly funny twenty-first century satire, The Maya Pill is strange, savage, bizarre, and uproarious.
German Sadulaev's follow-up to his acclaimed I am a Chechen! is set in a twenty-first century Russia, phantasmagorical and violent. A bitingly funny twenty-first century satire,…
A man and a woman in an isolated house, surrounded by nothing, or nearly nothing; besieged by urban desert or actual wilderness, by alcohol, cigarettes, and ghosts; by mothers, fathers, and lovers who have disappeared...Written in a seemingly unadorned style, with flashes of pitch-black humor, Askildsen's devastating stories convey in few words a portrait of life and thought as they are actually experienced, balanced between despair and hope, memories and expectations. He is recognized as one of the greatest Norwegian writers of the twentieth century, and among the greatest short-story authors of all time.
A man and a woman in an isolated house, surrounded by nothing, or nearly nothing; besieged by urban desert or actual wilderness, by alcohol, cigarettes, and ghosts; by mothers,…
The "plot" of Dror Burstein's dazzling meditation consists of nothing more than the author's lying on a bench, looking up at the night sky. What results from this simple action is, however, a monologue whose scope is both personal and cosmic, with Burstein's thoughts ricocheting between stories from his past and visions of the origin and end of the universe. The result is a fascinating blend of reminiscence, fiction, and amateur science, seeking to convey not only a personal story but the big picture in which the saga of life on Earth and of the stars that surround it have the same status as anecdotes about one's aunts and uncles. With a tip of the hat to W. G. Sebald and Yoel Hoffmann, Netanya seeks to transform human history into an intimate family story, and demonstrates how the mind at play can bring a little warmth into a cold universe.
The "plot" of Dror Burstein's dazzling meditation consists of nothing more than the author's lying on a bench, looking up at the night sky. What results from this simple action…
Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis (1922-98) shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a revelation. Beginning in 1930 when Gaddis was at boarding-school and ending in September 1998, a few months before his death, these letters function as a kind of autobiography, and are all the more valuable because Gaddis was not an autobiographical writer. Here we see him forging his first novel The Recognitions (1955) while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award-winning J R (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter 's Gothic (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to indite A Frolic of His Own (1994), which earned him another NBA. Returning to a topic he first wrote about in the 1940s, he finishes his last novel Agape Agape as he lay dying.
Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis (1922-98) shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a…
The long-awaited final work and magnum opus of one of the United States’s greatest authors, critics, and tastemakers, In Partial Disgrace is a sprawling self-contained trilogy chronicling the troubled history of a small Central European nation bearing certain similarities to Hungary—and whose rise and fall might be said to parallel the strange contortions taken by Western political and literary thought over the course of the twentieth century. More than twenty years in the making, and containing a cast of characters, breadth of insight, and degree of stylistic legerdemain to rival such staggering achievements as William H. Gass’s The Tunnel, Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, or Péter Nádas’s Parallel Lives, In Partial Disgrace may be the last great work to issue from the generation that changed American letters in the ’60s and ’70s.
The long-awaited final work and magnum opus of one of the United States’s greatest authors, critics, and tastemakers, In Partial Disgrace is a sprawling self-contained trilogy…
This riotous collection at last gathers together an expansive selection of Flann O'Brien's shorter fiction in a single volume, as well as O'Brien's last and unfinished novel, Slattery's Sago Saga. Also included are new translations of several stories originally published in Irish, and other rare pieces. With some of these stories appearing here in book form for the very first time, and others previously unavailable for decades, Short Fiction is a welcome gift for every Flann O'Brien fan worldwide.
This riotous collection at last gathers together an expansive selection of Flann O'Brien's shorter fiction in a single volume, as well as O'Brien's last and unfinished novel,…
Dentist Karl Meyer's worst nightmare comes true when his son, Ole-Jakob, takes his own life. This tragedy is the springboard for a complex novel posing essential questions about human experience: What does sorrow do to a person? How can one live with the pain of unbearable loss? How far can a man be driven by the grief and despair surrounding the death of his child? A dark and harrowing story, drawing on elements from dreams, fairy tales, and horror stories, the better to explore the mysterious depths of sorrow and love, Through the Night is Stig Saeterbakken at his best.
Dentist Karl Meyer's worst nightmare comes true when his son, Ole-Jakob, takes his own life. This tragedy is the springboard for a complex novel posing essential questions about…
