Absurdist Fiction

Una tranquilla notte di regime, che assomiglia a un febbricitante sabato notte delle nostre città popolato da allegre brigate di gerarchetti clarkopodi e clarette che ridono in posa, "come un set di spot di brut". Uno strano personaggio, un po' Marlowe un po' mago, titolare di una delle più antiche magie del mondo, passa le notti tra nostalgie e sbronze colossali al bar Apocalypso.

Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: His wife has been having an affair with Lucy's husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together but make a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage - she will hurt him three times.

Andrej is a postman in complete denial of his existence. He yearns for respect and fame but commits petty crimes for reasons he doesn’t fully comprehend. Josip is an increasingly irrelevant cable car operator and unfaithfully married. Life was so much simpler when neither one knew the other’s secrets. Now that they do - discovered quite by accident - each man has resorted to blackmailing the other. As their anonymous misdeeds escalate, a farce of mutual dependency begins. So does the unlikeliest of friendships when Andrej and Josip finally meet face-to-face.

When Fumiko emerges after one month locked in her dorm room, she's already dead, leaving a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food in her wake. For her boyfriend, Henrik, an aspiring translator, these remnants are like clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelganger, reappears: in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of young medical students, including “you”.

Greg Host is a normal guy. Or at least he was 6'2", mid-level retail manager, owner of one judgmental cat. But when he notices he’s a fraction shorter one morning, his ordinary life begins to unravel one inch at a time. No one believes him. Doctors shrug. His mom blames dehydration. And the universe? It just keeps laughing.

Il romanzo narra del giovane Mattia che, a seguito di una fortunata vicenda, e dopo una cospicua vincita al casinò, decide di seguire il destino che lo aveva fatto...

Während in München Palästinenser des "Schwarzen September" das Olympische Dorf überfallen, geschehen in der Sahara mysteriöse Dinge...

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.

Il fu Mattia Pascal è un celebre romanzo di Luigi Pirandello che apparve dapprima a puntate sulla rivista "Nuova Antologia" nel 1904 e pubblicato, nello stesso anno, in volume. Fu il primo grande successo di Pirandello. Il libro è seguito da un commento dello stesso Pirandello , aggiunto in seguito.

In fuga da un matrimonio infelice, il bibliotecario Mattia Pascal si ritrova a Montecarlo con una grossa somma vinta al casinò. Sulla via del ritorno a casa, scopre però dal giornale che al paese tutti lo credono morto. Decide così di approfittarne per cambiare vita, con una nuova identità. Antieroe grottesco, il protagonista racconta con umorismo le vicende che l'hanno portato a diventare il "fu" di se stesso.

"Sylvie e Bruno", pubblicato nel 1889, è il terzo e ultimo romanzo di Lewis Carroll, ben più famoso come autore di "Alice nel paese delle meraviglie". Il romanzo è piuttosto eterogeneo, e parti decisamente adatte ai ragazzi con semplici storie e filastrocche, si alternano con discussioni di tipo filosofico e religioso, o dialoghi che si svolgono sulla vena dell'assurdo, tipici dell'autore, per cui si situa decisamente tra romanzi per adulti (che abbiano vivo, in sé, il loro bambino interiore).

Tim Scott's inventive and hilarious science fiction novels are unlike any others. In a strange world where living refrigerators exist in herds like wild animals, Seattle has become a coddled city beset by irrational fears. Enter ex-cop Huckleberry, who's about to see his life take a turn for the weird when he stumbles into a dangerous conspiracy and the fridges become his only friends.

Il più celebre romanzo di Pirandello, scritto nel 1904, narra la storia del bibliotecario Mattia Pascal, il quale, da ricco proprietario terriero, dopo una vita di sprechi e scioperataggine, si ritrova ridotto in miseria, a causa delle ruberie perpetrate dall'amministratore dei suoi terreni.Un vortice di disgraziate vicissitudini travolge la sua vita, quando infine, alla morte delle due figliolette, in preda alla disperazione, fugge da Miragno e, per puro caso si ritrova nel Casino di Montecarlo, dove vince una considerevole somma alla roulette.

Beyond legend lies a reality so absurd it threatens to invert everything. Oscar Teabag-Dooven, poet by nature, Velvet Paw by necessity, is the only hope for a land on the brink of ignition. Some books brighten the world. This one sets it aflame. In a world where cats and dogs act like people, absurdity reigns supreme. Bedlam threatens to engulf the world—unless Oscar can stop it, which he’s willing to try, provided he has an enormous breakfast first.

The city of Liebe is gone and Oscar presumed dead. With Tabby Miss Cakes adrift in a crumbling realm of myth and memory, she's not sure what’s real anymore—or if anything ever was. When Oscar reappears, inexplicably alive, the two stumble into a bizarrely wholesome world where people sand horses, kindness is weaponised and no one seems to notice the sky is falling. That’s because a poet is eating reality.

*BONUS: Includes the viral essay sensation "The Crane Wife"* "An innovative work of climate fiction, a nuanced and empathic family story, and, for my money, the summer's best novel thus far." --NPR.org "The most oddly enticing novel you will read this year...Keenly satirical yet unashamedly...

King Edward IV did not like that Simon was thrice removed from some long-forgotten ancestor who was somehow related to the owner of the cow that gave milk to King Henry V. Or something like that, Simon was not very good at genealogy. But now, the Lancastrian lordling has fled to the far reaches of the world to brood on revenge. He's stranded in these strange waters with money-hungry Captain Aldo Mitacchione, his halfwit first mate, Neno, and a crew of starving Italians. Things are about to get stranger.

“As intellectually playful as the best of Thomas Pynchon and as sardonically warm as the best of Kurt Vonnegut, The Heap is both a hilarious send-up of life under late capitalism and a moving exploration of the peculiar loneliness of the early 21st century. A masterful and humane gem of a...

It is the summer of 1914. As the world teeters on the brink of the Great War, a callow American painter, Francis Wyndham, arrives at a renowned European insane asylum, where he begins offering art therapy under the auspices of Alessandro Caligari - sinister psychiatrist, maniacal artist, alleged sorcerer. And determined to turn the impending cataclysm to his financial advantage, Dr. Caligari will - for a price - allow governments to parade their troops past his masterpiece: a painting so mesmerizing it can incite entire regiments to rush headlong into battle.

In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as "The Deadening", where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice - the one and only Carver Canute - set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine.