An anthology of absurdist speculative fiction This unique anthology of absurdist speculative fiction is packed with bizarre, out-of-this-world tales. Featuring wicked avant-garde riffs, satirical weirdness, dystopian parody, pastiche, and ‘sci-fi to die for.’ Contributors include Alfred Jarry, Illimani Ferreira, Harry Stephen Keeler, Doug Skinner, RJ … Continue reading →
With its blending of dark eroticism and ethical nihilism, Eugenie de Franval is arguably one of the Marquis de Sade’s most shocking stories. The story is an unsettling philosophical experiment, a tale of sexual experimentation taken to its extreme. Sade’s … Continue reading →
Illuminations The Drunken Boat Arthur Rimbaud Translated into English by R J Dent Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854–10 November 1891) was a French poet known for the visionary, transgressive and surreal themes in his work, and for the influence of … Continue reading →
by Le Comte de Lautréamont Isidore Ducasse (1846, known to the world as Lautréamont, is one of the most controversial, influential, and enigmatic figures in 19th century French literature. His classic, The Songs of Maldoror (also available in translation by … Continue reading →
Charles Baudelaire ‘Into this atrocious book, I put all my heart…’ – Charles Baudelaire Charles Baudelaire’s most famous work is his masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil (1857), which shocked the nineteenth-century French literary world with its outspoken descriptions of lesbian … Continue reading →
Fanfarlo is Charles Baudelaire’s only novella, first published in 1847, ten years before the publication of The Flowers of Evil. In Fanfarlo, a semi-autobiographical tale, the protagonist, Samuel Cramer attempts to help a married woman whose husband is involved with an erotic dancer named … Continue reading →
The spectre of Gilles de Rais, the Satanist and child-killer, eclipses French history like a dark star. Satanic Alchemy is a testament to the legend of Gilles de Rais and his status as history’s first ever Devil-worshipping serial killer. Gilles de Rais … Continue reading →
Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s The Future’s Eve (L’Éve Future, 1886) is a visionary interrogation of technology, humanity, and ideal love. When Lord Ewald asks his friend (a fictionized Thomas Edison) to replace Alicia, his flawed lover, Edison births Hadaly, a lifelike … Continue reading →
As strange, unsettling, and memorable as The Seed, The Bridges is a remarkable novel which carries with it all the compassion, human insight, and lyrical power of all of Tarjei Vesaas’s novels. It describes the changing relationships between three teenagers—a … Continue reading →
Tarjei Vesaas’s The Seed is set on a small, idyllic-seeming Norwegian island which is visited by a stranger during a particularly hot summer. After a young girl is murdered, the stranger is blamed and hunted down by the islanders. The … Continue reading →
