Dedalus Ebooks: 136 books

There is an odd,subversive book called The Decadent Gardener by Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray. The introduction describes the decadent gardening ethos thus:'In the garden, the decadent seeks to create a moment of beauty, which should be allowed to fall into decay and ruin.'Gardening,Lucan and Gray believe,...

'This hideously decadent fin de siecle novel has become an underground classic. There are satirical and allegorical dimensions, but it remains irreducibly horrible.' Phil Baker in The Sunday Times ' First published in 1898 this decadent classic flays civilised society down to its hypocritical bones...

'The Interpreter isn't merely the sequel to New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs: it is a singular and deeply felt thesis, a warped manifesto of sorts, derived from a career spent immersed in languages. For Marani is up to his old tricks. Like in its predecessors, the novel comes dripping...

Cousin Bazilio is a tale of sexual folly and hypocrisy and vividly depicts bourgeois life in 19th-century Lisbon. "Sauciness and scandal come as part of the enticing package in this 1878 European classic by Portugal's most celebrated 19th century writer. Cousin Bazilio might not be his best work, but...

The scene has shifted from verdant Italy and steamy Mexico of the Spring and Summer Sonatas to rainy Galicia and wintry Navarre and the court of the pretender Carlos during the final Carlist War in the Autumn and Winter Sonatas. 'Valle-Inclan's descriptive writing comes through delightfully in Margaret...

'It is a fascinating book... Jay is excellent is on the emergence of medical science as a social force.' W.N.Herbert in Scotland on Sunday 'As well as exploding the fantasy that a society without drugs used to exist, Jay clarifies the question of why so many of them were outlawed...in the process,...

Abbe Jules, first published in 1888, is the second part of Octave Mirbeau's autobiographical trilogy and tells the story of a priest's lifelong struggle with his passions. Narrated from the viewpoint of a small boy, it depicts the stifling atmosphere of petit bourgeois, provincial France, where family,...

The Decadent Traveller is a timely antidote to the nightmare world of backpacks, duty-frees and gastro-enteritis. It contains enough excitement and excess to last most armchair travellers their reading lifetime. 'For those unacquainted with Lucan and Gray's act, the pseudonymous pair write in character...

The Last of the Vostyachs won two literary prizes in Italy: The Premio Campiello and The Premio Stresa. As a child, Ivan and his father work as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. Ivan�s father is then murdered in front of his...

The clash between Christianity and paganism in a dark and hostile world is at the heart of Time of the Beast. In the Dark Ages, Athwold, a young monk, leaves his monastery in disgrace, to seek spiritual redemption by becoming a hermit in the wild expanse of the dismal Fenlands. Here he experiences love,...

Immortalised in Christopher Isherwood’s classic novel Mr Norris Changes Trains, Gerald Hamilton was the real-life model for the seedy but beguiling Mr Norris. Isherwood put him on the literary map but he was on other maps already, including those of police forces across Europe, and he was interned...

First published in 1876, Marthe was an important landmark in J.K. Huysmans's literary career: it was the 28-year old writer's first excursion into the novel form and propelled him into the growing ranks of the Naturalist movement, then beginning to take shape under Zola�s direction. Marthe was one...

'Georges Rodenbach, the Belgian Symbolist, died in 1898 but his writing is so modern it might have been written in this century. He eschews the heavy descriptions of most 19th century oeuvres for a lightness of touch that allows the reader to dance over the pages. Hans Cadzand�s Vocation is a novella...

The misfortunes of Jean Folantin, a downtrodden clerk working for the Ministry of the Interior in Paris, form the subject of J.-K. Huysmans’ blackly comic novella, Drifting (À vau-l’eau). At first glance, Folantin’s problems seem to be a world away from those of Jean Floressas des Esseintes,...