Books I Want From Dedalus Publishing

"Dedalus has invented its own distinctive genre, which we term distorted reality, where the bizarre, the unusual and the grotesque and the surreal meld in a kind of intellectual fiction which is very European."

The Arabian Nightmare
Author: Robert Irwin

"At one stage in this labyrinthine narrative, a character complains 'things just keep coming round in circles'. The form of this clever tale owes something to The Thousand and One Nights. The subject matter is exotic and Eastern, the episodes linked tangentially and mingling one into another. Into the thread of the stories, Irwin injects discussions on sexuality and religion. However, since dreams, as we are shown, are themselves a deception, then the philosophical points must necessarily be falsehoods. The invention is exhuberant, but the author manages to keep control to stop everything lurching into shapeless indulgence. The result is a unique and challenging fantasy." The Observer

The Dark Domain
Author: Stefan Grabinski

"Dedalus have unearthed a series of aptly decadent titles where elements erotic and grotesque combine. The Dark Domain is a collection of psycho-fantasies, doom-saturated tales of lonely men lost in hostile terrain, but the East European melancholy lifts to provide wonderful odd scenes, like the watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks and the phantom train that always turns up unannounced, surprising the station staff." Time Out

The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence : Emperors of Debauchery
By: Geoffrey Farrington
Translator: Brian Murdoch

"Concentrates on the outrageous behaviour of the ruling class of the Roman Empire, as described in passages selected from the prose, poetry and history of the period. Their murder plots, sexual deviances, orgies, cruelty and incessant intrigue put our politicians and their peccadillos on a play school level." Time Out

The Golem
Author: Gustav Meyrink
Translator: Mike Mitchell

"This is a fever of a book. An hallucination, a wild writer's improvisation on an old Jewish fairy tale. The Golem reveals its secrets in the lives of murderers and thieves, not seers. Its sufferings are not devilish torments, but bitter sex games played in the shadows of Ghetto corridors. There is no sweetness in the low-life, no salvation in a condemned man's understanding.There is not a letter of sentimentality in The Golem. For an esoteric classic Meyrink's novel is short on mysticism and long on materialism. It does for Prague what Joyce did for Dublin and Bely for St.Petersburg." Venue

The Great Shadow (and other stories)
By: Mario de Sa-Carneiro
Translator: Margaret Jull Costa

"Sa-Carneiro was only 26 when he committed suicide in Paris in 1916. His short stories depict madness, death, erotic jealousy and fin de siecle decadence in fragmented and luminously synaesthetic prose. Almost anticipating Kafka, he describes a scientist killed by the machinery of an invisible parallel world, and a poet, whose verses fly to the stars leaving blank pages in their wake." Scotland on Sunday

The Other Side
Author: Alfred Kubin
Translator: Mike Mitchell

"Expressionist illustrator Kubin wrote this fascinating curio, his only literary work in 1908. A town named Pearl, assembled and presided over by the aptly named Patera, is the setting for his hallucinatory vision of a society founded on instinct over reason. Culminating apocalyptically - plagues of insects, mountains of corpses and orgies in the street - it is worth reading for its dizzying surrealism alone. Though ostensibly a gothic macabre fantasy, it is tempting to read The Other Side as a satire on the reactionary, idealist utopianism evident in German thought in the early twentieth century, highly prescient in its gloom, given later developments. The language often suggests Nietsche. The inevitable collapse of Patera's creation is lent added horror by hindsight. Kubin's depiction of absurd bureaucracy is strongly reminiscent of Kafka's The Trial, and his flawed utopia, situated next to a settlement of supposed savages, brings to mind Huxley's Brave New World; it precedes both novels, and this superb new translation could demonstrate its influence on subsequent modern literature." Time Out

Tales of the Wandering Jew
Author: Brian Stableford
Translator: Brian Stableford

"This homage to one of the world's great stories collects the Wandering Jew's many English-language manifestations, a fascinating journey down the tangled roads of European Literature, as infinite as those Ahasuerus is still walking. This collection offers you the chance to hitch a lift on the immortal sufferer's back. It's not the sort of offer anybody should turn down." City Limits

The Zero Train
Author: Yuri Buida

"Set during the Soviet era, this remarkable novel was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize. A remote, police-run settlement called the Ninth Siding exists only for the mysterious Zero Train that halts there. Buida uses the idea as the basis for a haunting, Kafkaesque parable of Russian history." Scotland on Sunday

Letters Back to Ancient China
Author: Herbert Rosendorfer

"A 10th-century Chinese mandarin travels forward in time, and writes letters home reporting on the strange land of 'Zha-ma-ni' in which he is surrounded by giants with big noses, and frightened by the iron carriages called 'mo-tao-ka'. We gradually realise that he is in present-day Munich, and the hapless voyager's encounters with modern life and love, make delightful reading." Scotland on Sunday