literature davidovich cigarettes apocalypse

books:

8 reviews
Scott Zwiren

Dalkey Archive Press, 1996

Enthralling
A must read! God Head takes you INSIDE the mind of a mentally ill person, ie: the narrator of the story. This is the first book I have read to do this, and it makes for one crazy thrill ride. As you read from first person perspective you get to jump around with the craziness of the main character's head. Every loop and twist he takes you take, and every time he rambles insanely off track you ...

The Best of Myles (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series)

8 reviews
Flann O'Brien

Dalkey Archive Press, 1999

YES! I Can Finally Own My Own Copy!
A friend lent me his copy (an Irish edition) of this book five or more years ago, and I've been searching for my own copy ever since. I'm delighted to find it's been reprinted and I just placed my order. I envy anyone who has not yet read this book of collected columns and essays -- the outrageous details of the Ventriloquists' War, the intricacies of the Catechism of Cliche, and the wisdom ...

Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

9 reviews
Felipe Alfau

Dalkey Archive Press, 1989

work of a genius
This may sound absurd - but "Locos-...." is truly the work of a genius. Some books surpass the boundaries of time and this is one such book. To summarize the book in one sentence will be like this "non-characters are characters, fiction is reality and solutions are problems". Felipe Alfau was a strange character and so are his books - very very different, they remind us of the writings of ...

Nothing

5 reviews
Henry Green

Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

Fine British literary gem with fabulous nuanced dialogue!
The British writer Henry Green's literary skill went far beyond a comedy of manners, which this book appears to be on the surface. Dense with meaning, "Nothing" is a short literary gem, which forces the reader to read a million nuances into the witty and yet deeply dense conversations which make up the entirety of the book. The story is set in 1948 and follows John and Jane, now middle aged but ...

Eros the Bittersweet

6 reviews
Anne Carson

Dalkey Archive Press, 1998

From the Classics
The Greeks did not cover everything but they made a pretty good start. Anne Carson has always been the queen of fitting classical allusions to the evident. The book could be described as an extended exploration of `Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortase requiris/ nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.'- Catullus. (I hate and I love/ Why do I, you ask ?/ I don't know, but it's happening/ and it ...

North

10 reviews
Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Dalkey Archive Press, 2007

The wildest of Celine's many wild rides
I love all of Louis-Ferdinand Celine's novels, from "Journey to the End of the Night" to "Rigadoon", but I have to say that "North" is my favorite. It's hard to say why exactly, because his novels are mostly simlar in tone and style, except for "Journey", his first, which is his most accessible, ellipses-free novel...Bukowski (who turned me on to Celine in the first place) said that Celine went ...

The Trick Is to Keep Breathing: A Novel

11 reviews
Janice Galloway

Dalkey Archive Press, 1995

Haunting
My interest in the band "Garbage" led me to this book - its title was used by them to create a chillingly magnificent song on their second CD. I found the book itself to be one of the most creative and compelling works I read this year. The story it tells gets under your skin to such a point that I don't recommend it for those already depressed. For the rest of us, it is a chilling look inside a ...

Castle Keep (American Literature)

4 reviews
William Eastlake

Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

Better than Hell(er)
If Jim Jarmusch ever decides to do a war film, this is what he should base it on. This is a wonderfully odd, comic and moving account of war as pure absurdity. The writing is tons better than Heller in Catch-22, the most obvious comparison. Set in Belgium, a group of American soldiers are given the assignment of holding a castle against the on-coming German front. Their leader is a one-eyed ...

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Eastern European Literature Series)

7 reviews
Danilo Kis

Dalkey Archive Press, 2001

If a man does not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies
he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Danilo Kis was born in Serbia in 1935 to a Hungarian Jewish father and Montenegrin Serbian mother. His father perished in the Holocaust. Kis died of cancer in 1990 at age 55. As noted in an excellent introduction by the writer, poet and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky, ...

The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life

13 reviews
Flann O'Brien

Dalkey Archive Press, 1996

Not for Nationalists
This book is an inside joke, and a classic at that. It is a grand send up of professional Irish (both at home and abroad). As example, consider a book written in Gaelic making sport of the Gaelic movement by means of a Gaelic festival. ( In ourland of the professional ethnic festival, this might serve as an effective antidote to "Irish" nights and "Scots weekends.") If you are inclined to ...

Cigarettes (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

3 reviews
Harry Mathews

Dalkey Archive Press, 1998

Life is short
Cigarettes appears to be Harry Mathews' most conventional novel. That is only because Mathews' experimental devices and his far off, imaginary locations are not a part of this work. Surely this work is nothing like the previous work, but it is as artistic as the others. This is the literature of the salon, of Marcel Proust and, shall I dare say it, Jane Austen? And if one does not read the name ...

Palinuro of Mexico (World Literature Series)

4 reviews
Fernando Del Paso

Dalkey Archive Press, 1996

drink it... in little gulps
so you think 100 years of solitude was the ultimate latinamerican novel? Not at all .Very well misbegotten, Palinuro de México has remained for a long time in the dark, almost surrepticiously. This is a very "natural" combo of baroque, enciclopedia and just mad characters . Of course it is political, but it is also very funny, almost overwhelmingly so. If you are looking for a taste of ...

LA Batarde: (The Bastard) (French Literature Series (Normal, Ill.).)

3 reviews
Violette Leduc

Dalkey Archive Press, 2003

If you love relentless self-consciousness
Violette Leduc invented her own poetics of solitude. Her writings are the ravings of a mad schoolgirl, feverishly and sensually neurotic, and achingly romantic. As unhappy as Violette claims to be, you want to be her, to have her heights of perception, and to desire as intensely as she does. If you like it light and breezy, skip this writer. But if you like to take that queasy peek behind ...

Phosphor in Dreamland (American Literature Series)

3 reviews
Rikki Ducornet

Dalkey Archive Press, 1995

a great literary exercise
This novel by Rikki Ducornet's is a wonderful play of plenty of literary techniques and relevant themes that are present in her first novels in an embrionic form. Phosphor in Dreamland is the narration of an allegorical voyage from civilization to the natural world in which Ducornet is capable to introduce such important topics as the search for a poetic language to understand the universe, the ...

Garden, Ashes: A Novel (Eastern European Literature Series)

4 reviews
Danilo Kis

Dalkey Archive Press, 2003

Sum total of our uncertain knowledge
My expectations were different. After the grandiose and realistic, if invented, 'Tomb for Boris Davidovich' about the Gulag, I expected a realistic semi-biographical novel about WW2 in Yugoslavia/Hungary and about the Holocaust. Not so. What we get is an anarchic text which left me disturbed and puzzled, but also impressed and wondering, if the introduction's claim that this is the only way to ...

Letters: A Novel

3 reviews
John Barth

Dalkey Archive Press, 1994

Like the tide, Barth's stories cleanse and refresh our life
I suppose it is inevitable that, as the post-war boomers approach the big six-zero over the next decade, we will see a tidal flood of tender, soul-searching narratives. Boomers want to understand rather than simply experience life, and most have been frustrated by life's refusal to obey our expectations. John Barth seems to have made such soul searching his life work, and I seem to have ...

Chapel Road

4 reviews
Louis Paul Boon

Dalkey Archive Press, 2003

Chapel Road
A complex but very rewarding book. There are 3 story lines, all at different times in history, but all set in the same part of Flanders, in Belgium, and all portraying a similar image of injustice and despair. Although they may seem unrelated, the attentive reader will soon discover the links. It is one of the most important books of contemporary Dutch literature. However, readers who dislike ...

A Minor Apocalypse: A Novel

4 reviews
Tadeusz Konwicki, Robert L. McLaughlin

Dalkey Archive Press, 1999

Most Amazing Book
The thing that separates most Polish authors from other Western authors is the sense of responsibility they bring to writing. Minor Apocalypse is a prime example of this. Konwicki's use of self-reference and surrealism is not only breath-taking and provoking, it allows him to make very bold (for the time) comments on post-war Poland and the machinery of politics, propoganda, and activism. You ...

Magnetic Field(s)

4 reviews
Ron Loewinsohn

Dalkey Archive Press, 2002

Experiencing Space(s)
In a recent interview, Loewinsohn explains that he wrote the novel in basically six weeks(!), but when I think about how I read this amazing, enthralling, mysterious novel in practically one fevered gulp, I'm not surprised. I can't wait to read it again. Divided into three sections, MF begins with a burglar's experiences of being in the homes (spaces) of complete strangers and what he imagines ...

Sacco And Vanzetti Must Die!

3 reviews
Mark Binelli

Dalkey Archive Press, 2006

A work of considerable talent and originality
The Nic Sacco and Bart Vanzetti in Mark Binelli's novel "Sacco And Vanzetti Must Die!" are not the infamous anarchists executed for treason by the United States government, but film stars and slapstick comedians who rose to fame through a seedy New York vaudeville club, then on to Hollywood films and USO tours (where they opened with disastrous results for Bob Hope). Eventually their careers ...

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