Dedalus: 154 books

The Red Laugh was written in 1904 during the uncertain period following Russia's ignominious defeat at the hands of the Japanese It is the feverish and fragmentary monologue of a Russian officer, overcome by the horror of man's inhumanity and driven to seek refuge in insanity.Although self-consciously...

Pascal Bruckner's memoir reads like a novel, a Bildungsroman which charts his journey from pious Catholic child to leading philosopher and writer on French culture. The key figure in Bruckner's life is his father, a virulent anti-Semite, who voluntarily went to work in Germany during the Second World...

The first novel to be translated into English from Guinea Bissau, The Ultimate Tragedy is a tale of love and emerging political awareness in an Africa beginning to challenge Portuguese colonial rule. Ndani leaves her village to seek a better life in the capital, finding work as a maid for a Portuguese...

'As a reader you find yourself teased, intrigued and disorientated. You never quite know where you are - whether you are reading a series of lies, illusions and superstitious tales, or whether this is a great work of art with its own special kind of truth. Although the book clearly has roots in medieval...

My favourite of all locked-room novels has at last been reissued. The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written in 1908 by Gaston Leroux, better known for The Phantom of the Opera, and has never been bettered. The first in a series of novels to feature the intrepid if naive young reporter and sleuth, Rouletabille,...

The story revolves round the angelic and mysterious hermaphrodite Seraphita who seems to inspire love in all she meets. One of Balzac's most unusual novels which will appeal to lovers of the mystical and the supernatural 'Seraphita will be my master stroke. One can create a Goriot every day but one...

Select guidance on extreme cuisine,gutter beverages,tawdry travel, seedy films, dissolute sex and corrupt individuals. Featuring contributions from the 19th century's anti-heroes - Oscar Wilde,Octave Mirbeau and J.K.Huysmans and the wayward spirits of our age- Hari Kunzru, Nicholas Royle, Louise Welsh, Helen Walsh, Belle de Jour

The Fiery Angel is one of the great achievements of modern Russian literature, as powerful and revolutionary as its contemporary, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. In a vividly atmospheric recreation of the occult underworld of sixteenth century Germany, during an age of Inquisition,...

A new translation by an award winning translator rescues this work from being out of print in English. Goethe�s collection of stories (1795) is modelled on the Decameron. A family of German nobles have been forced from their home on the left bank of the Rhine by the French Revolution. Their peace...

n the Spring Sonata, while in Italy, Bradomin is a young man who falls in love with a young girl destined to become a bride of Christ. To get over his unhappy love affairs, in the Summer Sonata Bradomin goes to Mexico but gets embroiled with a Yucatan princess married to a bandit-king. 'Each of the...

The chapter headings say it all: Corruption and Decay; Blood, the Vital Ingredient;The Gastronomic Mausoleum; and I Can Recommend the Poodle. This is a not a normal cookbook but a slightly sinister and highly literate feast of decadent writing on food. There are dishes from the tables of Caligula and...

Confessions of a Flesh-Eater is the story of a grand passion - man and meat, and the intimate relationship between them. 'Set in the present, the tale has all the grim foreboding of a genuine Gothic work. Its tone and emphasis owe much to James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Mary Shelley's...

J.-K. Huysmans� Stranded (En Rade 1887), published just three years after the iconoclastic Against Nature, sees him again breaking new ground and pushing back the boundaries of the novel form. Stamped throughout with his characteristic black humour, Stranded is one of Huysmans� most innovative,...

Gray's reworking of the Animal Farm concept brings in a post-Thatcherite twist. Having peacefully co-existed with his friends Mouse and Rat (the latter carries a briefcase and wears Italian suits), the Cat's owners suddenly leave him to fend for himself. He then has to fall back on feline instincts,...