Fiction - Absurdist

Set in the 1950's, this epic, Warholian novel presents a brilliant and wholly original take on the years leading up to the Kennedy assassination.Where were you when you first heard President Kennedy had been shot? This is a question most people can answer, even...

"Did you know most anything that matters in this city was built by magic before it was built by men? Of course you didn't. This city is different from other cities. The true history of it is unpublished. Lucky for you, I know it...

The Sunday of Life (Le Dimanche de la vie), the late Raymond Queneau's tenth novel, was first published in French by Gallimard in 1951 and is now appearing for the first time in this country, in a translation by Barbara Wright. Critics are universally...

In 1964, with the stories of Gogol's Wife, New Directions introduced English language readers to the indelibly strange Italian master Tommaso Landolfi. Each tale is more astonishing than the next (what with a sacrilegious ape and an inflatable wife), though the stories are all...

An eccentric novelist begins to keep a notebook of handwriting exercises, hoping that if he's able to improve his penmanship, his personal character will also improve. What begins as a mere physical exercise becomes involuntarily colored by humorous reflections and tender anecdotes about living,...

Praise for Sam Savage: "Savage's is a book of the heart as much as the head. Which is itself an accomplishment of no small note: to recognize the arbitrary, degraded thing that is memory, and allow it its loveliness for all of that." --New...

The end of the world is the least of the problems facing Gaspard Boisvert, erstwhile advisor to "the stupidest American president in history," when he discovers that he may share the genes of a certain, infamous Austrian corporal, thanks to a dalliance on the...

Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize One of BuzzFeed's Fifteen Small Press Books To Kick Off Your 2020 Reading Season A fastidious pet robot with a knack for knitting. A soporific giant pitching camp in the middle of a city. A mysterious mime...

Wholesome but gullible weekend market goers from the city face chaos and trauma at the organic strawberry u-pick farm. A student illegally backpacks through Cuba, attends a Santer a party, and wakes up with a horrible, mysterious illness and paralysis, uncertain of the true...

A uniquely humorous and deeply profound novel from a legendary stand-up comedian that follows the thoughts of a 1960s third grader during a single day at school. Steven Wright is one of the most significant and influential stand-up comedians in history. Rolling Stone ranked...

"Scapellato's blend of existential noir, absurdist humor, literary fiction, and surreal exploration of performance art merges into something special. . . . The Made-Up Man is a rare novel that is simultaneously smart and entertaining." --Gabino Iglesias, NPRStanley had known it was a mistake...

In three comic novellas, three unlikely hero-narrators insist their respective ways into revisionist stories --- imagined or real --- of rescue, resistance and ironic retribution. Darkly funny and politically urgent, their clumsy, self-conscious if sincere attempts answer our absurdly sadistic recent civic despair with...

One of the most remarkably inventive voices of his generation, author Will Self delivers a stunning work of fiction. In Walking to Hollywood, a British writer named Will Self goes on a quest through L.A. freeways and eroding English cliffs, skewering celebrity as he...

Renegade artist Harp Spillman is lower than a bow-legged fire ant. Because of an unhealthy relationship with the bottle, he's ruined his reputation as one of the South's preeminent commissioned metal sculptors. And his desperate turn to ice sculpting nearly led to a posse...

What if zombies and leprechauns inhabited the same universe? What if The Wind in the Willows were faced with the horrors of the Lovecraft Mythos? Worlds Collide endeavors to answer these questions and several more in a collection of short stories containing knights, elves,...

New short stories from Through the Looking-Glass worlds of Alice Liddell & Charles DobsonAuthor: Caroline WayISBN-10: 1291660151ISBN-13: 9781291660159Publisher: Lulu.comLanguage: EnglishPublished: 07/27/2021Pages: 88Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.25lbsSize: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.18d

The book we didn't know we needed - hilarious and action-packed, this novel has you laughing and crying well into the night. Read with caution.Joe Vallen is a normal author - our world's JV, anyway. The Joe Vallen of our novel is the most...

Eager to learn the rules of magic, Lucius agrees to participate in a shapeshifting spell that suddenly goes awry, transforming the man into a donkey. His life is abruptly upended as he is attacked, stolen and sold multiple times before finding relief through divine...

It was the end of 1999 and the world was anxiously anticipating a new century while John Hammond was reluctantly celebrating a childhood goal - to live one hundred years.Few people realized that John was the last living member of the legendary Hammond Family....

In a dilapidated trailer park in rural 1990's Pennsylvania, whiskey-soaked Weezal Peterson works hard to forget his past-and largely succeeds. That is until he's targeted by Maisey, a smart and resourceful young woman on a mission to put a lifetime of poverty and domestic...

Eager to learn the rules of magic, Lucius agrees to participate in a shapeshifting spell that suddenly goes awry, transforming the man into a donkey. His life is abruptly upended as he is attacked, stolen and sold multiple times before finding relief through divine...

Leonard Marcs is temp-to-hire at the Adventurer's Guild, and like most of the freelancers in Castaway, has no memory of coming to this dodgy little town at the bottom of the Multiverse. All he gets are terrible quests, and when he's not blackout drunk,...

Elf privilege. Marginalized mermaids. Woke trolls. Pumpkin fairy reparations...Welcome to the chaotic kingdom of Fantasmagoria, where an inquisition for absolute equity rages and the masses combat all forms of social injustice by any means necessary. Elves are burned at the stake for suggesting there...

Elf privilege. Marginalized mermaids. Woke trolls. Pumpkin fairy reparations...Welcome to the chaotic kingdom of Fantasmagoria, where an inquisition for absolute equity rages and the masses combat all forms of social injustice by any means necessary. Elves are burned at the stake for suggesting there...

In What are the Chances? Robert Scotellaro once again secures his place as a solid master of micro-fiction. Each story an adventure with the likes of rogue Uber drivers, breakdancing butchers, and skydiving grandmas. Each story told with the ever-present undertone of Scotellaro wisdom...

Once Upon a Fable is a lively collection of seven compelling and comforting tales with 20/20 vision. There's a solid marriage verging on the rocks; an abandoned baby raven and a family of field mice; a precocious little boy, his strong-willed nanny, and his...

"Andre Duza is one of the most exciting new voices in horror fiction. His prose hits like a fist of razor blades. Get in line early, and enjoy the hell out of the ride." - Brian Keene, author of The RisingWhen the cops were...

Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn--the madcap follow-up to his debut novel, which was hailed by authors as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Jane Smiley, and Paul Theroux --explores the deepest recesses of American politics and culture. Bob Honey, the disillusioned divorcee with a penchant...

For fans of China Mieville and Neil Gaiman. A tale of revolution in a Reykjavik fuelled by industrialised magic, populated by humans, dimensional exiles, otherworldly creatures, psychoactive graffiti and demonic familiars. A tale of revolution in a Reykjavik fuelled by industrialised magic, populated by...

An inventor living at the beginning of the Enlightenment keeps journals reflecting on everything from his inventive lovemaking to his discovery of the first binary code, caffeine stimulation, the insanity defense, and the memory of birds.First published in 1996 to international acclaim, Eric Darton's...

A puzzling mystery and the last, unfinished work by Georges Perec--a writer Italo Calvino called, "One of the most singular literary personalities in the world." The narrator, a teacher in a tropical French colony, is trying to track down the famous crime-writer Robert Serval,...

Over 650 Vietnam War novels have been published, mostly dark tales from the war zone. In Wild Blue Yonder, Airman Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers goes not to Vietnam but Germany, straight into a military Catch-22. His assignment: writing stories for the Stars and Stripes newspaper...

Being a teenager is awkward. Being a teenager when you're attracted to your aunt is even more awkward. Being a teenager when you're attracted to your aunt who happens to be a seventies pin-up poster hanging in your uncle's bathroom is almost unbearable. Aunt...

The only acting credit on the back of Stan Pavlov's headshot is "appeared in court". But one day, his life takes an unexpected change - for the worse - when his beloved Dog inadvertently gets cast in the commercial Stan was auditioning for. Pavlov's...

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book in Translation of 2019Zs fia Ban's Night School: A Reader for Adults uses a textbook format to build an encyclopedia of life--subject by subject, from self-help to geography to chemistry to French. With subtle irony, Ban's collection of "lectures"...

"I'm a connoisseur of the unwanted; a sommelier of deformity; a coveter of the unloved. I am forever chased by the shadow of my ugliness. In darkness, no shadow remains, and it's all diamonds." Buddy Hayes is an ugly, defiant little man, a would-be...

"[A] dystopian novel too close to today's political world..." -Lea Wait, USA Today Bestselling author2020 International Book Awards Finalist - Humor2019 Best Book Awards Finalist - HumorLife on Mars takes a satirical look at evolution vs. Intelligent Design - a sort of feint by...

Theres no business like show business, and Arturo Hammer knows that firsthand. From the hard-drinking fields of Northern California, to the soft entertainment fields of Hollywood, and from the orchards of the Big Apple to the jungles of Indochina, Hammer goes on a drug-fueled,...

"An incredibly interesting work." --Jane Smiley "A straight up masterwork." --Sarah Silverman "Blisteringly funny." --Corey Seymour "A transcendent apocalyptic satire." --Michael Silverblatt "Crackling with life." --Paul Theroux "Great fun." --Salman Rushdie "A provocative debut." --Kirkus Reviews From legendary actor and activist Sean Penn comes...

Summer is winding down and strange days have hit the town of Needles, Massachusetts. Barry Drinkwater, a pool-boy for his parents, is unsure how to proceed when cryptic messages land in his lap while floating in the backyard. Whenever Barry thinks he is alone,...

Two patrons appear in a dim cafe one day. How they've arrived, where they've come from, and why they're there at all, they have no idea. What they do know is that they hate one another.So they smoke. They tinker. They talk about art....

Stunning and visceral in its emotional impact, The Dark Will End The Dark collects 14 stories by veteran author Darrin Doyle. Deftly mixing realism and fabulism, bleakness and hope, sparkling dialogue and unforgettable characters, these literary Midwestern Gothic tales remain in the reader's mind...

The debut novel from PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of Call Me Zebra and Savage Tongues is a comic psychological thriller, an absurdist journey into the heart of darkness. A man purchases a house, the house of Fra Keeler, moves in, and begins investigating the circumstances...

Twenty-six weird tales from the underground, ranging from one-page microbursts of energetic prose to longer.Author: Jon LonghiISBN-10: 0916397122ISBN-13: 9780916397128Publisher: Manic D PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/01/1991Pages: 128Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.35lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.53w x 0.30d

In this fiendishly original new novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed, and eavesdrops on the erotic fantasies of Victoria's Secret models -- which naturally revolve...

AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY HARDCOVER CLASSIC. Ivan Goncharov's 1859 masterpiece--a magnificent farce about a gentleman who spends the better part of his life in bed--brilliantly employs humor to explore the absurdities and injustices of an outmoded social order. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a good-hearted nobleman...

GET SHORTY MEETS THE BIG LEBOWSKI IN THIS ROLLICKING MODERN COMEDY BY A CLEVER AND HILARIOUS NEWCOMER. Meet Wally Moscowitz. His day job is top secret. As ghostwriter for Oral B, the most famous gangsta rapper in the world, Wally is the real mastermind...

Philip Horkman is a happy man, the owner of a pet store called The Wine Shop, and on Sundays a referee for a local kids' soccer league. Jeffrey Peckerman is the proud and loving father of a star athlete in the girls' ten-and-under soccer...

Fun and puns mingle with daring make-believe. Larger-than-life characters play out the crucial human questions: How do we live? How do we handle our demons?Author: Stephen DobynsISBN-10: 0393312127ISBN-13: 9780393312126Publisher: W. W. Norton & CompanyLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/01/1995Pages: 430Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.91lbsSize: 8.27h x 5.45w x 1.08dReview...

Michel Faber's short stories are markedly diverse-the voice of each is so distinct that the book reads like an anthology of different writers. But Faber's radically inventive style fastens all fifteen stories into a compelling collection deserving of the high praise it garnered in...