Fiction - Absurdist

Part revenge tale, part fairytale, The Harpy is an electrifying story of marriage, infidelity and power by the author of the #1 Indie Next Pick, The End We Start From, Megan Hunter Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the...

"Darkly funny, surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on." -- Los Angeles TimesNamed one of the year's best novels by: Time - Salon.com - Los Angeles Times - NPR/Fresh Air - New West - Kansas City Star - St. Louis Post-DispatchA comic and heartfelt...

Gala Murowski wasn't really looking for God when she joined her local nunnery, but when an ecstatic out-of-body experience sets her spinning through a godless cosmos, she becomes an avenging angel on a rogue crusade against the hypocrites who prey on the innocent in...

A Tale of Passion, Perseverance, and Missing MeatloafDr. Robert Chudinski, an idealistic academic, is fresh out of his doctoral program, when he accepts a position at Eastern Wisconsin University. Dr. Chudinski believes he will finally have the opportunity to change the world "one student...

The Blue Flowers follows two unlikely characters: Cidrolin, who alternates between drinking and napping on a barge parked along the Seine in the 1960s, and the Duke d'Auge as he rages through history--about 700 years of it--refusing to crusade, clobbering his king with a...

Annalee Pearce is a pregnant 16-year-old who has been placed in a corrective centre run by nuns for refusing to co-operate with authorities. Once in there, she soon rebels, breaks a sister's jaw with a "roundhouse right" and, when her son Daniel is born,...

An irreverent, allusive, scatalogical, tragicomic masterpiece that centers on the patrons of a run-down bar as they try to document the details of their lives in a country that appears to have forgotten the importance of remembering. In Republic of the Congo, in the...

"More Kafka than Kafka, Renee Gladman's achievement ranks alongside many of Borges' in its creation of a fantastical landscape with deep psychological impact." --Jeff VanderMeer Since 2010 writer and artist Renee Gladman has placed fantastic and philosophical stories in the invented city-state of Ravicka,...

"These immersive linked stories grapple with Ukrainian history through the waning years of the USSR and birth pangs of democracy ... Reva's characters spark off the page as they confront a brutal bureaucratic past with the only tool they possess--hope."--O, The Oprah Magazine A...

The wealthy scientist Martial Canterel guides a group of visitors through his expansive estate, Locus Solus, where he displays his various deranged inventions, each more spectacular than the last. First, he introduces a machine propelled by the weather, which constructs a mosaic out of...

New Directions is proud to present one of the most spellbinding novels you will read this year, and certainly the weirdest.First published in 1931, Unclay glows with an unworldly light--Death has come to the small village of Dodder to deliver a parchment with the...

Katherine is an average twenty-something with all the usual stress and anxiety: school; money; her soul-crushing job. But something else plagues her. It is as if something is lurking...inside her.Strange hallucinations, slips of reality, and dangerous urges drive her to the edge of sanity....

It's as if Richard Brautigan and Derek McCormack rewrote Collateral to make it a buddy film in which reality is constantly in the process of collapsing. This is the detective novel on acid.--Brian Evenson Detectives Michael and Daniel must try to solve a murder...

OH SHIT MOTHERFUCKERS IT'S GREAT GATSBY TIME The groundbreaking sequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterwork,"The Great Gatsby". Lights greener than ever before Each dream more American than the last The jazziest age of all It's Great Gatsby time The Great Gatsby 2 The Great...

With a new introduction by Marianne Faithfull"Terry Southern writes a mean, coolly deliberate, and murderous prose." --Norman MailerKing B., an Oscar-winning director, is now determined to shoot the dirtiest and most expensive X-rated movie ever made. Displaced to Liechtenstein (which, in order to boost...

"A collection of flash fiction that feels seemingly arbitrary with an ache of human longing for connection peppered in. . . . These bizarre but beautiful stories transport you elsewhere with no intention of bringing you back." --Ashleah Gonzales, W magazine In this collection...

Grand and minute, elegiac and hilarious, Lynne Tillman expands the possibilities of the American novel in this dazzling read about a former historian ruminating on her own life and the lives of others--named a best book of the century by Vulture. In the hypnotic,...

Revenge of the Translator is acclaimed French writer Brice Matthieussent's brilliant, hilarious, rule-defying exploration of the creative acts of writing and translating, and the often complicated relationship between authors, their translators, and readers.Author: Brice MatthieussentISBN-10: 1941920691ISBN-13: 9781941920695Publisher: Deep Vellum PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/25/2018Pages: 352Format: PaperbackWeight:...

"SPRAWL in fact does not sprawl at all; rather, it radiates with control and fresh, strange reflection." --Bookforum"Reads as if Gertrude Stein channeled Alice B. Toklas writing an Arcades Project set in contemporary suburbia." --The BelieverWhen Danielle Dutton's SPRAWL first broke upon the world...

"An elegant, postmodern fairy tale." --Jacob Hoefer, Bookseller, Labyrinth BooksAway! Away! -- a new novel from Jana Beňová, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature! Sometimes running away is the bravest option. Or, so believes Rosa, who ditches her husband and home and...

ONE OF BOOK RIOT'S "20 MUST-READ HORROR BOOKS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF" Simon and Marie can't seem to have a baby. And so they flee the city for an idyllic village, where things will certainly be better. But the town is gloomy, even hostile...

The Flower Show and The Toth Family, two novellas in one volume by Istv n rk ny (1912-79), introduce to an English-speaking audience a Hungarian writer with a keen sense of the absurdities of modern life. In the '60s and '70s, rk ny's vein...

The end of the road for Moldenke?The Death of a Character is cult author David Ohle's mordant meditation on the trials of the flesh, of bureaucracy, and tenderness. In the company of and old flame, and the neutrodynes Wheaton and Darleen, Moldenke retires to...

Conversation of the Three Wayfarers is a tale overheard, rather than told directly. Abel, Babel, and Cabel, the wayfarers, carry on a three-sided monologue, each reporting curious incidents--the effect is of three capers rolled into one: a steeplechase performed on a floating pontoon. But...

"Noll is a hero of Brazilian literature who deserves to be widely known in the English-speaking world and this fascinating shape-shifting novel is a wonderful introduction to his work." --Jenny Offill, author of WeatherLike an Edenic Adam birthed from the clay, our narrator rises...

In a chaotic city, the latest in a line of viruses advances as a man recounts the fated steps that led him to be confined in a room with his lover while catastrophe looms. As he takes inventory of the city's ills, a strange...

After giving up on his dream of being a published writer, Chris is plagued by a series of nightmarish visions of grotesque creatures. As the visions manifest with greater frequency they start targeting his young daughter. They are finding their way into his world...

"Expansive and imaginative." --Kirkus Reviews "Irreverent and bursting prose... Fans of Mark Leyner will enjoy Kaufman's messy string of outrageous scenarios." --Publishers Weekly Part modern fable, part detective novel, a journey through grief in the imaginary world of Metaphoria. One cold winter night, Charlie...

Boris Leonidovich, a North American professor who specializes in the history of prison architecture, has been invited to Buenos Aires for an academic conference. He's planning to present a paper on Moscow's feared Butyrka prison, but most of all he's looking forward to seeing...

From the creator of the HBO series Bored to Death, the story of a young alcoholic writer and his personal valet, a hilarious homage to the Bertie and Jeeves novels of P.G. Wodehouse. Alan Blair, the hero of Wake Up, Sir , is a...

Excerpts from Russell Edson's first novel, Gulping's Recital, appeared in The Moderns: An Anthology of New World Writing, edited by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones at the time) and published by Corinth Books in 1963. That was a year prior to the New Directions publication...

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.From the bestselling author of The Hundred-Year Flood comes an incredibly entertaining and profoundly affecting tour de force about a Korean American man's strange and ordinary attempts to exist.Matt Kim is always tired. He keeps passing out. His...

'A seductive blend of Samuel Beckett, Pauline R饌ge and pure madness.' Stewart HomeFrom mid-century working-class experimentalist Ann Quin, author of Berg, comes this poetic, erotic and psychologically charged mystery.Author: Ann QuinISBN-10: 1911508938ISBN-13: 9781911508939Publisher: And Other StoriesLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/02/2021Pages: 160Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.35lbsSize: 7.70h x 5.00w...

Part revenge tale, part fairytale, The Harpy is an electrifying story of marriage, infidelity and power by the author of the #1 Indie Next Pick, The End We Start From, Megan Hunter Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the...

In the words of the late Walker Percy, William Gass is a "totally committed, totally uncompromising, and extraordinarily gifted writer." His latest work is a suite of four novellas that explore Mind, Matter, and God. In the title story, God is a writer in...

Ideas are dangerous . . .James Appleby's career as a social historian is drifting into mediocrity until the phone call that changes his life forever.Appleby uncovers a dangerous secret hidden deep in a chest of 400-year-old documents. To his horror, its discovery ignites a...

The Flaneur is a collection of short stories that take place at a cafe; each story is a conversation overheard from the perspective of the narrator (The Flaneur), ranging from the mundane day-to-day to the downright absurd. The characters in each story search for...

The beloved author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared returns with an enchanting adventure that skewers the greed and hypocrisy that dominates our time and holds lessons about what's truly important in life.Meet Ole Mbatian Jr., a Maasai...

He fantasizes about saving damsels in distress and battling beasts. He'd better be careful what he wishes for... Will Kirby has hit his mid-life crisis at full speed. Once a rugged outdoorsman, he's now soft around the middle and trapped in the banality of...

You can read this novel for its silliness & absurdity. Its author uses every trick in the book - and a few uniquely his own-to keep the laughs coming. You don't have to take this novel seriously. You may enjoy merely for the fun...

From the internationally bestselling author of Disquiet, a brilliant political allegory that vividly illustrates how capitalism and authoritarianism harm us and the environment. Having failed to hold onto power after an ironfisted first term, the former President moves to a secluded island and decides...

A Man in the Zoo (1924) is a novel by David Garnett. Published several years after Garnett was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Hawthornden Prize for Lady into Fox (1922), his third novel explores themes of race and empire while...

2022 QUILL & QUIRE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE 30TH ANNUAL HAMILTON LITERARY FICTION AWARDA bold and absurd new take on the dystopian plague novel, where people are treated like IKEA furniture Distraught and hopeless, an eighteen-year-old distance runner, Regan, decides to...

The Dying Fetus that started it all is back with a vengeance!True Fiction is an ongoing collection of short fiction and novellas. Volume One consists of three novellas that make up one crazy story. It begins with "Dying Fetus," a simple tale of a...

Didier Rain is broke, lovesick, and just off a three-day whiskey binge. And yet, The Church of the Restructured Truth has been told in a vision that he's the man to fulfill their Holy Prophecy. He must deliver Virtue - a blue-eyed infant -...

"Joanna Ruocco's Dan is a tiny novel that packs a massive punch." --Bustle Melba Zuzzo, erstwhile innocent of the male-heavy hamlet of Dan, a town located in the foothills of ... somewhere? ... finds herself in a rut. In fact she was probably born...

"Nails" Robakoski is unraveling after his girlfriend Magda dumps him. A tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time doing little more than searching for his next line of speed and dreaming up conspiracy theories about the Polish economy, Nails ricochets from Magda, a...

Will Self has established himself as one of the most brilliant, daring, and inventive writers of his generation. My Idea of Fun is Will Self's highly acclaimed first novel. The story of a devilishly clever international financier/marketing wizard and his young apprentice, My Idea...

What is there is only a limited amount of sanity in the world and the real reason people go mad is because somebody has to? What if a mysterious tribe in the Amazon rainforest turn out to be the most boring people on earth?...

In this novelistic romp that is by turns hilarious and brilliant, John Barth spoofs his own place in the pantheon of contemporary fiction and the generation of writers who have followed his literary trailblazing. Coming Soon!!! is the tale of two writers: an older,...