Showing titles in Absurdist

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.

Dr. Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of peace and quiet, gardening in his backyard, and tinkering with what he calls his latest "unpublishable book". As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of seeming coincidences into involvement with a group of characters from across Europe, including a family that has been the target of assassination attempts by unknown powers. During his journey to Romania, the situation in which he finds himself becomes more sinister than it first seemed.

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...

Blumfeld, ein älterer Junggeselle ist eine unvollendete Erzählung von Franz Kafka. Sie wurde 1915 verfasst und postum veröffentlicht. Kafkas Erzählung behandelt die skurrilen Schwierigkeiten eines Junggesellen in seinem Privat- und Berufsleben.

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, in a new modern-prose English translation, narrated straight through by Mike Vendetti. One morning, Gregor Samsa wakes up as an insect. His first worry is that he is late for work. His family's first worry is what to tell the boarders. A hundred years later, the story still comes across like it was written this morning—the exhaustion, the dread of the phone ringing, the way a family talks about a sick person as if he weren't in the room. Kafka wrote it in 1915. He never lived to see it in English.

From the first puzzling sentence, Banker's Holiday—a euphemism for a federal bank closure—conjures the bleak and humorous world of Cincinnatus Stillman Fuller, a billionaire financier who suffers a breakdown in the middle of a Monday morning staff meeting.

Tutto può accadere nel bar sotto il mare. Un bar in cui tutti vorremmo capitare, una notte, per ascoltare i racconti del barista, dell'uomo col cappello, dell'uomo con la gardenia, della sirena, del marinaio, dell'uomo invisibile, della vamp e degli altri misteriosi avventori. Sompazzo, il paese più bugiardo del mondo - Gaspard Ouralphe, il più grande cuoco di Francia - Il verme mangiaparole e l'incredibile storia del capitano Charlemont - La disfida di Salsiccia - Il dittatore pentito - Kraputnyk, il marziano innamorato - Priscilla Mapple e il delitto della II C.

A woman metamorphoses into a giant slug; another quite literally eats her heart out; a wasp falls in love with an orchid; and hair starts sprouting from the walls. These stories slip and slide between genres - from video games to fan fiction, body horror to choose-your-own-adventure - as characters cycle through giddying changes in gender, physiology, species, and identity. Collapsing boundaries between bodies and forms, these fictions interrogate the visceral, gross, and absurd.

Silverville’s St. Patrick’s Day goes sideways when Nana O’Shea’s Pot of Gold display disappears, along with antique gold nugget boxes that may—or may not—hide a treasure map. Then her main competitor’s famous Irish cream pie is sabotaged, and security footage points straight to Nana.

Wedding videographer Heath Álvarez is searching for something to reignite his passion for life when he crosses paths with Paul Brokovich — an elementary school teacher by day and stand-up comedian by night. Disillusioned by routine and the impressionable chaos of Parkins' Elementary, Paul hires Álvarez to chronicle the 24 hours leading up to the most important performance of his unimpressive career.

Die legendäre Originalversion der Lesung von Dirk Bach – pur, ungekürzt, virtuos. Man schrieb das Jahr 2002, als Dirk Bach ins Studio ging und seine charakteristische Stimme dem berühmten Käpt'n Blaubär, dem Held des ersten Romans von Walter Moers, seine Stimme lieh. Und so wurde der phantastische Kontinent Zamonien samt seiner Bewohner von Bachs leidenschaftlicher Virtuosität zum Leben erweckt:

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...

Billy Boustany uncovers a mystery that transforms his sleepy midwestern city into a vibrant metropolis of iridescent skyscrapers, wild parties, and eccentric characters. He has the adventure of a lifetime, but it comes with a perilous secret. When Billy shares his discovery with his college student daughter, they explore together until they reach a magnificent city of Native Americans at an ancient site. However, they also encounter a formidable foe—the Knights, a secret society bent on keeping outsiders away.

Racconto magico, Il colombre ha come protagonista lo squalo di misteriosa natura che si rende visibile solo alla propria vittima, che inseguirà per anni e anni finché sarà riuscito a divorarla. Durante un viaggio per mare col padre, il piccolo Stefano ha la sciagura di vedere il mostro: per tutta la sua lunga vita di navigatore resterà inchiodato a una muta, terribile gara a distanza. Ma quando, ormai vecchio, egli si deciderà a sfidare lo squalo, apprenderà da lui che ben altro era il compito della bestia.

“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...

The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in rivers: a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age. Akutagawa’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa.

Awarded a three-month stipend to travel and work, a Swedish writer flies to Madrid, where in a bar she meets a man with an extraordinary story to tell. In exchange for somewhere to sleep and to hide out for a few days, he is willing to tell her the whole astonishing tale. What follows is an account of fantastic proportions and ingredients: the existence of a shadowy Internet TV show with a certain morality clause, a threat to the storyteller's life, a diabolical nun, and the story of a girl with a missing left thumb.

Life is so unfair, and it sends many things to try Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs and pillar of the Institute of Romance Philology in the proud Bavarian city of Regensburg. There is the undeserved rise of his rival (and owner of a one-legged...

“A unique alien invasion story that focuses on the human and the myriad ways we see and don’t see our own world. Mesmerizing.” —Jeff VanderMeer A blend of searing social commentary and speculative fiction, Chana Porter’s fresh, pointed debut explores a strange new world in the wake of...

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...