Absurdists Surrealists and Annihilation
Explore the finest absurdist and surrealist fiction in this curated reading list, featuring Alfred Jarry's Exploits & Opinions of Doctor Faustroll and Karel Čapek's War with the Newts, alongside tales of annihilation and existential dread.
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Exploits & Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician
by Alfred Jarry
The singular novel by the legendary author of the play, UBU ROI, is a book that can only be compared to Rabelais or Sterne. FAUSTROLL recounts the adventures of the inventor of PATAPHYSIC, the 'science of imaginary solutions.' Jarry would have found an audience more readily if he had simply written a work of science fiction, a symbolist narrative, a bawdy tale or a spriritual allegory. As it is, FAUSTROLL is all of these at the same time.' - Roger Shattuk'
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War with the Newts
by Karel Čapek
An inspiration to writers such as Orwell and Vonnegut, this is one of the great anti-utopian satires of the twentieth century and is now regarded as a modern classic. Man discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that they gain enough skills and arms to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom. 'God bless Catbird Press for calling the attention to a great writer of the past who speaks to the present in a voice brilliant, clear, honorable, blackly funny and prophetic.' - Kurt Vonnegut
