The Universal Draught

The Book of Dreams

These stories all started with dreams and the impulses they brought, inspired by natural beauty, emotions, and the wandering of the subconscious mind.

The Universal Draught, by author Elena Lebedeva-Fradkoff in collaboration with Helen Hagon, shares narratives of inventive psychological fiction ranging from the grotesque to the sensuous. Here, reality meets the dream world in a mysterious haze of uncertainty, introducing endangered wasps, the voices of the unborn, wolves of the snow, the surgical removal of souls, and much more. Drawn from both dreams and real encounters in the waking world, these tales depict impossibly real characters and places. They also transcend cultural boundaries, offering an exploration of characters and realities projecting from an otherworldly existence into our own realm.

Featuring original illustrations, this dream-based short story collection presents experimentations with the real and surreal through the creation of profound fantasy and new literary worlds.