Books with category Surreal
Displaying 7 books

What is Not Yours is Not Yours

2016

by Helen Oyeyemi

What is Not Yours is Not Yours is an enchanting and thought-provoking collection of intertwined stories cleverly built around the idea of keys, both literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side.

In “Books and Roses”, one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers’ fates. In “Is Your Blood as Red as This?”, an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” involves a “house of locks,” where doors can be closed only with a key—with surprising, unobservable developments. And in “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think”, a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).

Oyeyemi’s tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.

Museum of the Weird

2010

by Amelia Gray

Museum of the Weird is a stunning collection of stories that reveal wondrous play and surreal humor.

A monogrammed cube appears in your town. Your landlord cheats you out of first place in the annual Christmas decorating contest. You need to learn how to love and care for your mate—a paring knife. These situations and more reveal the wondrous play and surreal humor that make up the stories in Amelia Gray’s stunning collection.

Acerbic wit and luminous prose mark these shorts, while sickness and death lurk amidst the humor. Characters find their footing in these bizarre scenarios and manage to fall into redemption and rebirth. Museum of the Weird invites you into its hallways, then beguiles, bewitches, and reveals a writer who has discovered a manner of storytelling all her own.

Travels in the Scriptorium

2007

by Paul Auster

Travels in the Scriptorium is a fantastic, labyrinthine novel from the beloved author Paul Auster. An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues.

Determining that he is locked in, the man—identified only as Mr. Blank—begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs.

As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell—vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember—and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while, an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching.

Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own.

Ice

2006

by Anna Kavan

In this haunting and surreal novel, the narrator and a man known as the warden search for an elusive girl in a frozen, seemingly post-nuclear, apocalyptic landscape. The country has been invaded and is being governed by a secret organization. There is destruction everywhere; great walls of ice overrun the world.

Together with the narrator, the reader is swept into a hallucinatory quest for this strange and fragile creature with albino hair. The novel is acclaimed for its extraordinary and innovative narrative, recognized as a major work of literature in its own right.

Marabou Stork Nightmares

1997

by Irvine Welsh

Marabou Stork Nightmares is a daring and audacious novel by the acclaimed author Irvine Welsh, known for his cult classics like Trainspotting and The Acid House. This novel plunges readers into the mind of Roy Strang, a man trapped in a coma, whose hallucinatory adventures unravel the path that led him there.

Roy's surreal quest involves eradicating the malevolent marabou stork, a predator-scavenger, in an imaginary South Africa, while being constantly interrupted by vivid and disturbing memories of his dysfunctional family and tumultuous upbringing in a Scottish housing scheme.

As the boundaries between reality and hallucination blur, Welsh crafts a lethally funny cocktail of pathos, violence, and outrageous hilarity, showcasing his unique ability to blend dark humor with deep psychological insights.

The Unconsoled

1995

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. As he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical – and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be – he comes steadily to realize he is facing the most crucial performance of his life.

Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control explores themes of identity and self-discovery. This surrealistic journey is both a mesmerizing and a thought-provoking adventure.

The Moustache

"The Moustache" is a remarkably intriguing novel that begins with what seems to be a trivial joke. The protagonist whimsically decides to shave off his moustache, intending to surprise his wife. However, this simple act spirals into a bizarre nightmare.

To his shock, everyone around him, including his wife, insists that he never had a moustache. This leads him into a world where the line between reality and imagination becomes increasingly blurred. Is he losing his mind, or is he caught in a monstrous conspiracy orchestrated by those closest to him?

In a desperate bid for sanity, he attempts to escape, but will running away provide the answers he seeks, or is it merely the point of no return? This novel will leave readers pondering the fine line between sanity and madness.

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