100 Best Surrealism Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best surrealism books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
Brian KoppelmanIf you have always wanted to read [this author], I think this [Covid-19] period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. (Source)
Bernard TanI’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)
John CraigThe only book, or should I say author, that takes priority is Haruki Murakami. He is a Japanese novelist that takes me into the next world. His style is surreal. Check it out. Start with Kafka on the Shore. (Source)
Neil Gaiman@Slavinskas_art I love that book. (Source)
Max LevchinOne of the finest works of fiction of the last century. (Source)
Rupert IsaacsonIt’s all about compassion for yourself, for others and really how ultimately that’s all that matters. (Source)
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a... more
Brian KoppelmanIf you have always wanted to read [this author], I think this [Covid-19] period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. (Source)
Bernard TanI’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)
Sung J. WooHe’s the best-known Japanese writer right now and this book I would consider to be his opus. It’s a big sprawling book that deals with weighty subjects like the Second World War and Japan’s part in that. There is a horrifying section set when the Japanese had occupied Manchuria and the Chinese are approaching and it’s told from the point of view of a soldier who is told to kill all the animals in... (Source)
Barack ObamaWhen asked what books he recommended to his 18-year-old daughter Malia, Obama gave the Times a list that included The Naked and the Dead and One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I think some of them were sort of the usual suspects […] I think she hadn’t read yet. Then there were some books that are not on everybody’s reading list these days, but I remembered as being interesting.” Here’s what he... (Source)
Oprah WinfreyBrace yourselves—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is as steamy, dense and sensual as the jungle that surrounds the surreal town of Macondo! (Source)
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
David Heinemeier HanssonIt’s a fascinating writing style with a 3rd party observer that’s treated as an extension of the protagonists own sentiments and mind. It’s also just exquisitely written. And the concept of being on trial for charges unknown by a vast, impersonal, yet petty, bureaucracy pulls from a timeless well of societal anxieties. So far, so very good. About half way through. (Source)
Michael PeelI read this before going to Nigeria but moving there made me think about it a lot. The idea that the system always wins. (Source)
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."
With it's... more
David Lynch[David Lynch said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)
David Lynch[David Lynch said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over... more
Adam SavageSeriously, one of my favorite books of all time. (Source)
The translators of this edition were finalists of the 1970 National Book Awards in the category of translation. less
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Brian KoppelmanIf you have always wanted to read [this author], I think this [Covid-19] period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. (Source)
At its center are two sisters—Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny’s toward people whose lives are radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they’ve met before, a burly female “love hotel” manager and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute savagely... more
Countless scholars have tried to define the charm of the Alice books--with those wonderfully eccentric characters the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, Mock Turtle, the Mad Hatter et al.--by proclaiming that they really comprise a satire on language, a political allegory, a parody of Victorian... more
Eric Weinstein[Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)
Larry DoyleYou’d have to be a zombie to miss the humour in it – it’s hilarious. Although the book is ancient, the humour feels modern (Source)
The Hearing Trumpet is the story of 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, who is given the gift of a hearing trumpet only to discover that what her family is saying is that she is to be committed to an institution. But this is an institution where the buildings are shaped like birthday cakes and igloos, where the Winking Abbess and the Queen Bee reign, and... more
Carlos EireEven though he is no philosopher Vonnegut is still able to ask the questions that all of us think about – how time affects our lives. (Source)
Dan Christensen@MetaHumean Love that book. (Source)
Bernard TanI’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)
High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance. less
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood,... more
Bernard TanI’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)
TamTam Books is very proud to announce the upcoming publication of Boris Vian's masterpiece L'Ecume des jours. We are bringing out a new translation by Brian Harper with the full approval of the Vian estate. The English title is Foam of the Daze.
The translation made by Brian Harper takes into account the critical edition of Boris Vian's L'Ecume des jours edited with additional in depth... more
Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, some forty pieces drawn... more
Nicholas ShakespeareNo writer embodied libraries more than the immobile, blind Argentine, Jorge Luis Borges. (Source)
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Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should... more
Colin ThubronOh God. Well, officially it’s Marco Polo describing the cities of his travels to Kublai Khan. It’s been opined that every city he describes is a version of Venice, but I think that doesn’t really work. They seem to me to be marvellous imaginative fantasies, which sometimes reproduce states of mind. There are 40 or so cities described, all entirely imaginary I think, and that’s what’s so magical... (Source)
James MeekIt has different layers. The set-up is that Kublai Khan has conquered this vast empire; an empire so large that he, sitting at the centre of it, cannot know all the many parts of it. He can’t visit them, he can’t see them, and if he goes to one part all the other parts have changed. So he sits there at the centre of his empire and Marco Polo travels around and visits the various cities and comes... (Source)
This is the legendary collage masterpieces of Max Ernst (b. 1891), one of the leading figures of the surrealistic movement and among the most original artists of the 20th century. From old catalog and pulp novel illustrations, Ernst produced this series of 182 bizarre and darkly humorous collage scenes of classic dreams and erotic fantasies which seem mysteriously to lure the unconscious into view: Stern, proper-looking women sprout giant sets of wings, serpents appear in the drawing-room and bed chamber,... more
Mark O'Connellthere’s something culturally Irish, but not uniquely Irish, of using logic against itself — of exposing the absurdity that’s inherent in logic, if you know what I mean —that he does incredibly well. (Source)
Joanna WalshFlann O’Brien is very good at the combination of the familiar and the horrifying (Source)
An instant #1 New York Times Bestseller, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. Here Haruki Murakami—one of the most revered voices in literature today—gives us a story of... more
Brian KoppelmanIf you have always wanted to read [this author], I think this [Covid-19] period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. (Source)
Mathias EnardThe codes of the occidental novel were almost unknown in Iran and Hedayat is the first to play with them in an Iranian context (Source)
Amelia BooneThis is a book that you have to hold, because there are parts of it where you need to turn it upside down to read it. There are certain pages where, you are reading it, and it turns in a circle... This is a book that's an entire sensory experience. (Source)
Cloud... more
Robert EaglestoneIn this novel, you find stories that interlock like Russian dolls…an obvious example of a writer learning clever postmodern tricks, but domesticating them. (Source)
The Centre for the Study of Existential RiskThis is the perfect book if you want to read about human extinction but you still need to be ‘seduced’ into it. (Source)
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Ryan HolidayEqually allegorical, I read The Little Prince for the first time which for some reason I’d never been exposed to before. If you’re in the same boat, read it. It’s short but great. (Source)
Brandon Stanton[Brandon Stanton recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Karen PaolilloThe Little Prince has influenced me in every aspect of my life, from my own emotions and how I feel inwardly, to how I like to view our planet. (Source)
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of... more
Asher Wolf@trib I love that book. So much. (Source)
Zoe KeatingFor a while in 2015 I lost the ability to read (PTSD, I’m told) and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” and Eli Brown’s “Cinnamon & Gunpowder” were the first books I was able to understand and enjoy. @neilhimself’s book in particular was like a hand pulling me up. https://t.co/foEbRxYbuj (Source)
Nassim Nicholas TalebThis is something very hard to find, almost by definition: a literary writer who thinks in abstract terms (the only other such author I've read is Stanislaw Lem). These are philosophical thought experiments in their purest form, yet somehow magically delivered in a playful literary athmosphere. Borges is a mathematical philosopher, first and last. Ignore the "Latin American" categorization and... (Source)
Viktor Mayer-SchönbergerBorges asks what happens if we can’t forget? Will we be forever tied to an excruciatingly detailed past? Or will we be able to forget parts of it over time and therefore be able to evolve and move on? (Source)
Mohsin HamidThere is a transnational quality to Borges’s writing. (Source)
Published to coincide with the centennial of her birth, The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington collects for the first time all of her stories, including several never before seen in print. With a startling range of styles, subjects, and even languages... more
Susan J NapierMurakami is writer who creates wonderful visions the stranger aspects of our mundane world. Some people call him a magical realist; Murakami has our normal world being invaded by, by strange things. (Source)
After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd... more
A storm is coming . . .
Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day... more
Ricky WhittleNobody can break my family.I’m proud to be apart of this diverse cast & crew who are working their butts off to deliver a fantastic season 3 continuing to tell Shadows story and the awesome characters he meets along the way as in @neilhimself incredible book #readit #details🤔 https://t.co/PahPC9j3HB (Source)
Scott JohnsonAmerican Gods by Neil Gaiman. This is a brilliant thought experiment about what happens to a god when its believers stop believing. My preferred edition is the 10th Anniversary release with expanded text. (Source)
Marko RakarBasically, first of all, I am a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy books and I grew up with Douglas Adams and Arthur C Clarke. For me, this is the best of Gaiman’s books and I’ve got all of them. It’s set in the present time and talks about settlers who have settled a continent and have brought their gods with them. So, if you are Swedish and you cherish Nordic gods and move to the US, the... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Surrealism books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers. less
Igor DebaturQuestion: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche The Castle by Franz Kafka 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Source)
Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each... more
--penguinrandomhouse.com
Two Introductory parables: Before the law --
Imperial message --
Longer stories: Description of a struggle --
Wedding preparations in the country --
Judgment -- more
Georg GreyThe best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland; but that's because it's the best book on anything for laymen. (Source)
Shaun Tan evokes universal aspects of an immigrant's experience through a singular work of the imagination. He does so using brilliantly clear and mesmerizing images. Because the main character can't communicate in words, the book forgoes them too. But while the reader experiences the main character's isolation, he also shares his ultimate... more
Gill LewisIt is one of those books that grows and grows in your mind. It stays with you long after you’ve read the last page. (Source)
Simon Smith@lindsanderson @Misterbodd @PaulWat5 @f33lthesun Awesomely scary book full stop! Great though. (Source)
Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running... more
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An electronics salesman who has been abruptly deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package—and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been raised to view himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may... more
Bill EarnerMy favorites [novels] are 100 Years of Solitude, All the King's Men, The Last Samurai, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Source)
Matthew O’BrienIt’s one of my favourite books and probably my favourite Las Vegas-related book. Hunter S Thompson came out here in the early 70s to cover the Mint 400 off-road race for Sports Illustrated. He ended up writing a 10,000-word riff on his visit. In 1971, Jann Wenner ultimately published two long sections of it in Rolling Stone. Those two stories were the foundation for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Source)
Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support... more
Ryan HolidayI’m amazed how many young people haven’t read this book. Truly life-changing. This is the classic of my generation; it is the book that defines our age and ultimately, how to find meaning in it. It’s a cautionary tale too—about being too caught up in revolutionary ideas. (Source)
Van BadhamSUPER EXCITED to receive my copy of “Solved! How Other Countries Have Cracked the World’s Biggest Problems and We Can, Too” by Andrew Wear. SO GREAT to read a political book that’s about both pragmatic action *and* hope. Squee! #auspol https://t.co/jIYgr36kZO (Source)
The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).
[source wiki} less
Andrew LeesIn my book I explain how, after reading Naked Lunch, Burroughs and I drew up a Faustian pact. (Source)
David Heinemeier HanssonSeminal novel on existentialism and the absurd by Albert Camus from 1946. Explores that feeling of disconnectedness from society, its norms, and the absurdity of every day life. Striking first-person account in a powerful, direct language. (Source)
Kyle Maynard[Kyle Maynard said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)
In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard,"... more
Jack ZipesYes. Angela Carter played a very important role in my life because I was born in 1937, a few years before she was born, and although we didn’t grow up together, we both grew up in a world where sexism was out in the open. There was no critique of the type of sexism that I experienced when I grew up, and I think the same is true for her. And we both experienced what a lot of people called the... (Source)
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The entries range from the acerbic aphorisms of Swift, Lichtenberg,... more
Opening the flaps on this unique little book, readers will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written. Designed by Chip Kidd and fully illustrated, in full color, throughout, this small format, 96 page... more
Little is known of the author of Maldoror, Isidore Ducasse,... more
The group is made up... more
Stephen KingI'm loving THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY, by Jeff Vandermeer. Recommended by an indie bookseller. Creepy and fascinating. (Source)
Laura Dassow WallsA colleague of mine, Roy Scranton, knows Jeff VanderMeer and brought him to Notre Dame a few weeks ago for a reading. Way in advance, Roy said, ‘Laura, you’re going to love this guy, he’s the weird Thoreau.’ (Source)
James BradleyIn the introduction to The Weird, the 2011 anthology that Jeff Vandermeer and his wife Ann edited, they suggest the weird isn’t a genre or a form so much as a technique or an affect, a thing that lurks in the interstices, and which emerges in unexpected and unsettling ways. I rather love this idea, not least because it captures something of what makes both Annihilation and its two sequels,... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Surrealism books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Since 1991, these lusciously rendered, hypnotic fables have dazzled comics readers the world over. All the Frank stories in one massive and deluxe tome. Between its handsome cloth covers are 344 pages of Frank comics, drawings and oddities. A fancy dust jacket, swoon-inducing end papers and ribbon bookmark make this book a decorative object as well as a repository of storytelling genius. Frank is a unique, visionary comic, exquisitely drawn and so fully realized that readers find themselves drawn deeply into Woodring's hallucinatory mindscape.... more
Cantarel, a scholarly scientist, whose enormous wealth imposes no limits upon his prolific ingenuity, is taking a group of visitors on a tour of "Locus Solus", his secluded estate near Paris. One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind. An African mud-sculpture... more
Amanda PalmerHas a fantastical realism that pierces to the bottom of the psyche. I've re-read and re-read this sucker every five years. (Source)
Sanja ZepanFavourite non-business book would be Der Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. It's a book that's often read by privileged people who feel misunderstood (usually teens), so everyone focuses on the first part about loneliness in the bourgeois world and forgets about the whole second part of the book that's about overcoming that and finding a sense of humour, a shift in perspective, and a bit of distance.... (Source)
Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.
Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner... more
It's 1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer - and occult disciple - Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.
It's 1950. A lone surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the... more
Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral — the hypnotic secret shape of the world. This bizarre masterpiece of horror manga is now available in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror! less
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Nassim Nicholas TalebUntil I read this book, Buzzati's "Il deserto dei tartari" was my favorite novel, perhaps my only novel, the only one I cared to keep re-reading through life. This is, remarkably a very similar story about the antichamber of anticipation (rather than "the antichamber of hope" as I called Buzzati's book), but written in a much finer language, by a real writer (Buzzati was a journalist, which made... (Source)
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the... more
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous;... more
"Because we want them to thrive," Marla always says.
What does thriving look like? Like... more
Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere. less
Bronwyn Law-ViljoenIt’s sort of like an early graphic novel but in a completely whacked out style. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Surrealism books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Get ready for a behind-the-scenes look at the painting tools, methods, and inspirations of one of the top artists working in the growing field of Pop Surrealism. For the first time, beloved best-selling author and artist Camilla d’Errico pulls back the curtain to give you exclusive insights on topics from the paints and brushes she uses and her ideal studio setup, to the dreams, notions, and pop culture icons that fuel... more
The modernist masterpiece that is Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations has been given new life with the publication of John Ashbery's "dazzling" ( The Economist ) new translation, widely hailed as one of the literary events of the year. Presented with French text in parallel and a preface by its translator, Ashbery's rendering powerfully evokes the glittering, kaleidoscopic beauty of the original less
Jeremy Noel-TodThey have this very mysterious, elusive, hallucinatory quality. They’re the product of what Rimbaud said he wanted to do as a poet: the systematic derangement of the senses. But the amazing thing about them is that they are so lucid. T S Eliot called the effect on the reader an instant and simple impression. (Source)
— Le Monde
Originally published in 1945 by Les Éditions de l'Oubli in Bucharest, The Passive Vampire caught the attention of the French Surrealists when an excerpt appeared in 1947 alongside texts by Jabès and Michaux in Georges Henein's magazine La part du sable. Luca, whose work was admired by Gilles Deleuze, attempts here to transmit the "shudder" evoked by some Surrealist texts, such as André Breton's Nadja and... more
This volume brings together the painter’s collected writings, and includes an unpublished... more
Daniil Kharms... more
Joanna WalshI like that he invented his own name. He was born Daniil Ivánovich Yuvatchov. It marks a step into artificiality. He was a necessarily political author – he died in prison after falling foul of the Soviet regime in 1942, as many people did. But his absurdism seems to be more socially or linguistically oriented (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Surrealism books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
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