Showing titles in Absurdist

An explosive, jaw-dropping debut about a woman who loses her job as an oil company CEO after she’s filmed having sex with a tree in her sleep, a calamity that unravels her mind, spiraling her through history until she’s united with a centuries-old coven of ecstatically revolutionary women...

Who will become enlightened and what will be left of them? Scott Champion knows the meaning of life. And his life is great. He has everything a guy like him could want: a beautiful wife, a precocious daughter, a nice house in the perfect location, a great paying job that's so easy he doesn't even know what he really does, and a trust fund to help with his long-term goals. If he has a problem, it's other people, not himself. He's as surprised as anyone when he downloads the world's most popular meditation app and actually starts using it.

At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.

Oskar Matzerath ist anders. Mit drei Jahren beschließt er, nicht weiter zu wachsen. Der groteske Außenseiter betrachtet die Welt mit schonungslos-sarkastischem Blick "von unten". Sein ständiger Begleiter ist eine Blechtrommel. Mit ihr ertrommelt er sich Distanz, fordert, schreckt auf. Wird sie ihm genommen, setzt er sich mit einem Schrei zur Wehr, der Glas zerspringen lässt. So absonderlich der zornige Zwerg ist, so frei ist er. Oskar ist ein unerbittlich scharfsinniger Beobachter des Danziger Kleinbürgertums im "Dritten Reich".

Ten years have passed since Nathan Muir rescued Tom Bishop from a Suzhou Prison and escaped the CIA for good. Now, all his former agents have suddenly vanished leaving the CIA blinded around the globe. Then a coded message comes in from Malaysia with astonishing news: a lone spy has survived the mysterious purge. There's just one catch. He'll only reveal himself to the man Langley trusts less and despises more than Nathan Muir: Tom Bishop...

The brilliant new work from the bestselling author of ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ and ‘The Other Side of You’. Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam, read by Ramon Tikaram. There’s no problem Professor Chandra can’t solve. Except for one: the secret to happiness In the moments after the accident, Professor Chandra doesn’t see...

One of them is a bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist. The other is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Together, they form the League of Comic Justice, battling evildoers in the name of . . . Okay, we made that line up. What they do form is a writing team of pure comic...

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction Percival Everett by Virgil Russell is a story inside a story inside a story. A man visits his ageing father in a nursing home, where his father writes the novel he imagines his son would write. Or is...

“A propulsive, madcap story” (The New York Times) about a salaryman who decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper after a botched suicide attempt. "An outstanding writer not only of Japan, but of the world." —The Atlantic After salaryman Hanio...

When Tony Hardstaff breaks the bank playing ‘Snap!’ at the St Petersburg Casino, he is swept up in a maelstrom of romance and adventure. Seduced by the sultry Natassia Fillipovna Karamazov – a woman with curves so perfect they could make a geometry professor spontaneously combust – Tony is caught in flagrante by the Russian mafia, and flees for his life.

Kernphysiker Möbius, Entdecker einer furchtbaren und gefährlichen Formel, flüchtet, seine Familie preisgebend, ins Irrenhaus. Er spielt Irrsinn, er fingiert die Heimsuchung durch den Geist Salomos, um das, was er entdeckte, als Produkt des Irrsinns zu diffamieren. Doch zwei Geheimagenten, ebenfalls als Wahnsinnige getarnt, sind ihm auf der Spur.

In Assumption, Percival Everett is on top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning. Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old woman’s murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up...

Is Sex Necessary? was originally published in 1929 as a satirical and comedic exploration of romantic and sexual relationships, co-authored by iconic comedic writers E.B. White and James Thurber. Written in the aftermath of the Jazz Age and amidst changing societal norms regarding gender and relationships, Is Sex Necessary? parodies the burgeoning field of psychological and sexual analysis, poking fun at the over-seriousness with which such topics were increasingly dissected in the early 20th century.

One evening, Gillis—a young Scottish minister who technically doesn't believe in god—falls into a hole left by a recently dug up elm tree and discovers an ancient disembodied hand in the soil. He's about to rebury it when the hand... beckons to him. He spirits it back to his manse and gives it pen and paper, whereupon it begins to doodle scratchy and anarchic visions. Somewhere, in the hand's deep history, there lies a story of the Scottish reformation, of art and violence, and of its owner long since dead.

Sidney Geeder, King of Mortgages, wants nothing more than to cash in his lucrative company stock and quit his job, but his dreams are threatened by the disappearance of Eggs Igino, the only possible man who can replace him.

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading - and forgetting. But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a legendary creature, Ren is inexorably drawn into an impossible mission. As their lives entwine, unravel and erupt - as myth merges with reality - both Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love and what they fear. 

Sabine is a conceptual artist whose latest show, Fuck You, Help Me, is about to launch, when her world begins to unravel. Stalked by a mysterious figure whose approaches grow increasingly threatening, she spirals deeper into her neuroses as exhibition day approaches and her fear transforms into something primal and untamed.

Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New York and heads to to the Pacific Northwest. She's seeking to escape both the eyes of the world and the echoing voice of that last bad man. But a chance encounter with a dubious doctor in a graveyard, and the discovery of a dozen old film reels, opens the door to a study of both the peculiarities of her body and the absurdities of her famous family.

“A wonderful storyteller with a vibrant voice.” —The New York Times From the author of the cult classic Treasure Island!!!, a delightfully unhinged comedy following a woman as she attempts to exorcise the spirit of a dead corgi from her nephew and renegotiate the borders of her previously...