Bücher veröffentlicht von Snuggly Books

René Crevel (1900-1935), a bisexual communist who suffered from tuberculosis, was one of the most important surrealist authors, a true genius, and possibly the best writer of surrealist fiction, and no other of his works of fiction is more surreal than Are You All Crazy?-originally published in 1929 and here presented for the first time in English in a superb translation by Sue Boswell. In this feverish, full-speed-ahead novel of out-and-out madness, we meet a redhead who gives birth to a blue child, hear the naughty song of the pigtail-pullers, visit the Sexual Institute of Dr Optimus Cerf-Mayer, attend an eonism séance, and witness a fifty-kilo rat disembowelling a fakir. Are You All crazy? is a subversive masterpiece and a work of deep psychological interest, which, although puzzling in the utmost in its excesses of satirical bravado, certainly must be acknowledged to be one of the great European novels.

The Zaffre Book of Occult Fiction, the third volume of the books of occult fiction of many colours, brings together twenty-one tales, dating from 1908-1937, from the occult revival of the British Isles. Including both well-known figures, such as Dion Fortune and Algernon Blackwood, and lesser-known practitioners, such as Ethel Archer and the eccentric Prince Immanuel of Jerusalem, the present instalment is sure to fall within the sphere of beatific approval of not only seekers, adherents and occult enthusiasts, but also Masters and Ascendants. Containing a varied and luxuriant array of stories, about visions and hauntings, mystical agencies and seers, The Zaffre Book of Occult Fiction, edited by Brendan Connell, is an indispensable addition to any library of the supernatural and occult.

The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, here presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the most unusual works of Charles Nodier, and can readily be seen as a remote precursor of Alfred Jarry's "pataphysics," Guillaume Apollinaire's "surrealism" and Dadaism. Originally published in 1830, more than a hundred years before the publication of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Nodier's novel, like the latter, is a highly avant-garde work of dream fiction. It is deliberately incoherent, and in places deliberately incomprehensible, but its incoherence is never without an underlying purpose and an underlying schema, partly because it takes for granted the thesis that the apparent incoherence, inconsequentiality and incomprehensibility of real dreams must have an underlying purpose, however arcane, and an underlying schema, however bizarre-and that expeditions in literary surrealism are valuable processes of exploration, capable of offering valuable and unique rewards. It is, in its own peculiar fashion, a masterpiece of intelligence, wit and literary artistry. This edition of The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles supplements the title novel with three related texts: "On the Phenomena of Sleep," an essay on dreams, and two biographical fantasies, "Polichinelle," and "The Bibliomaniac."

Raun, certainly one of the great works of Futurist drama, if not the greatest, was written by Ruggero Vasari from 1926 to 1927 before being published in 1932. Here, presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brendan and Anna Connell, and with an introduction by Maria Elena Versari, is a dystopian masterpiece that is as relevant today as it was when it was originally composed. Rivaling, in its own way, the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, Raun is a fully-equipped tragedy in which, in the Era of Machines, eugenics are used to dehumanize a society obsessed with technical achievement and which is willing to sacrifice all in order to reach ever more exalted heights.

The Zinzolin Book of Occult Fiction, the first in a planned series of books of occult fiction of many colours, brings together twenty-two tales, dating from 1888-1911, from the occult revival of the British Isles. Including both well-known figures, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Aleister Crowley, and lesser-known talents, such as Helen Fagg and the mysterious Zuresta, this inaugural volume is sure to bring diversion and illumination to both interested acolyte and erudite mahatma alike. Containing a varied and rich array of stories, about dreams and séances, visionaries and madmen, The Zinzolin Book of Occult Fiction, edited by Brendan Connell, is an indispensable addition to any library of the supernatural and occult.

The current volume, edited and translated from the French by Brian Stableford, brings together fourteen stories composed in the thriving tradition of "literary Satanism" that was pioneered in the 1820s and continued throughout the century and into the twentieth, which subjected the figure to closer and more skeptical scrutiny than the theologians of the past, attempting a more clinical analysis of the idea.Including such fiendish pieces as "A Dream of Hell" by Gustave Flaubert, which was written when the author was sixteen years old, and "Dead Man's Dale," a classic tale of the Devil by the great Romantic writer Charles Nodier, The Snuggly Satanicon provides a useful additional piece of a much vaster jigsaw comprised by one of the chief imaginary motifs of modern literature, helping to provide a broader glimpse, and hence a more accurate appreciation, of a bigger picture.

"Delphi Fabrice" (the pseudonym of Gaston-Henri-Adhémar Risselin, 1877-1937), the most adamant of Jean Lorrain's disciples, is credited with authoring over one hundred books. None, however, is more bizarre than The Red Spider, here presented in English for the first time in a virtuoso translation by Brian Stableford. The novel, seeking to out-Decadent the most decadent of its predecessors, features Andhré Mordann, an ether-drinking hero seemingly modelled on Lorrain himself, who, in this "black, black, black tale"-a tale of true horror and madness-traverses the boulevards of decline, hobnobbing with drunken prostitutes and homosexual strong-men, licentious merrymakers and waterfront idlers-and, of course, the dancer gloved in imperial crimson.