Absurdist

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, winner of the 2019 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical. A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he...

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A uniquely humorous and deeply profound novel from a legendary stand-up comedian that follows the thoughts of a 1960s third grader during a single day at school. Steven Wright is one of the most significant and influential stand-up comedians in history. Rolling Stone ranked him fifteenth on...

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading - and forgetting. But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a local myth, Ren is inexorably drawn into her impossible mission....

Winner of the Locus Award and CIBA Mark Twain grand prize, The Man Who Saw Seconds is a gripping speculative fiction thriller, blending absurdist satire and adrenaline-charged suspense, about a New York man who can see five seconds into the future—which changes his life forever; perfect for...

Nightshift clerk and high-functioning insomniac Jack is back to work, trying his best to keep out of trouble.

A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing....

The excoriating stories in Mark Doten's brilliant first collection dissect the pathological narratives that shape our culture and country.

Akutagawa’s magical final work is a short novel with a magic spell all its own—poignant, fantastical, wry, melancholic, and witty.

Wilder Crick, the worst presidential candidate in history, is dead. Now his reluctant apprentice Tom and ruthless campaign manager Shelly must carry out his final order—a bizarre, posthumous search for the true, hidden nature of reality.

Fairy tales are as old as language itself. Long, long ago, storytellers all around the world told tales of wonder both to enchant and entertain us, and also to teach us that – if we are good and kind and courageous enough – we can change the world for the better. For this is what fairy tales do...

War on the mainland is draining Reykjavík. For some, the remote islands off Hrímland's coast are their only hope of survival. Elka, a recovering addict, has fled there with her son Sölvi.

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car....

In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude." an imaginary crime that defies definition....

Ein Blaubär entführt den Hörer in eine Welt, in der Phantasie und Humor auf abenteuerliche Weise außer Kontrolle geraten sind...

Trout Fishing in America is an indescribable romp, by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America's culture....

In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own....

A daring, hilariously neurotic literary debut from the acclaimed actor and comedian Brett Gelman (Stranger Things, Fleabag). Enter the wonderfully weird, always uncomfortable, side-splittingly funny world of The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, where your worst fears of who you are or might...

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of a mysterious poet. Their road trip enters a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches....

Tras saber que el Turco baja por la costa con una peligrosa armada, Don Alonso Quijano, el caballero don Quijote de la Mancha, saldrá, una vez más....

Oskar Matzerath ist anders. Mit drei Jahren beschließt er, nicht weiter zu wachsen. Der groteske Außenseiter betrachtet die Welt mit...

The Late Mattia Pascal (Italian: Il fu Mattia Pascal) is a 1904 novel by Luigi Pirandello. It is one of his best-known works and was his first major treatment of the theme of the mask....

Alan Blair, the hero of Wake Up, Sir!, is a young, loony writer with numerous problems of the mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and physical variety....

A darkly comic meditation on art, obsession, and the enigmatic power of friendship, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss stalks the museum halls of Europe, feverishly seeking salvation, annihilation, and the meaning of belief....

"Metafísica de los tubos" cuenta los primeros tres años de vida de un ser obsesionado por el agua...

For science teacher Baxter Plink, his grandmother’s funeral was already set to be a grim affair. But he never expected the deceased to wink at him. Or for his own navel to start glowing and projecting holographic replays of his most embarrassing potential deaths for the entire congregation to see. What begins as a personal quantum catastrophe quickly goes viral, becoming a global pandemic of "Quantum Embarrassment" where everyone's deepest regrets and unfulfilled dreams are broadcast from their bellies.

Nearly broke and on the run, Lilac regrets getting what he'd wanted most in life: winning Grandmother Harry's Silverbell Soup and Woodworking Award. People hate him everywhere he goes, religious leaders condemn him, politicians want to ban him, children pelt him with rocks. When he finds a haunted house that at first appears abandoned he finds a most distasteful means of redemption.

When MIT physicist Dr. Velcro Threadbare builds a Sock Singularity Engine to solve the mystery of missing socks, she accidentally tears a hole in the fabric of reality—literally. Now socks across the multiverse have gained sentience, and they're not happy. The matched wage war against the unmatched. A pug named Sir Barksalot becomes the Sock Pope, preaching liberation through deliberate mispairing. Criminal flamingo syndicates trade in celebrity sock radiation.

Spreadsheets are spells. Dragons are unionized. Nachos are a sacrament. Buckle up. When actuary Ptolemy “Tolly” Blackthorne inherits his grandmother’s scarf—a knitted, contraband probability anchor—he also inherits her secret: a multi-dimensional dragon-racing circuit that runs on risk, wit, and a frankly alarming amount of nacho cheese. Tolly’s talent for modeling disaster was supposed to keep him safe; instead it drafts him into a portal-hopping season where vertical Niagara roars upward, magma judges enforce “Fun is mandatory,” and Mars rovers form a picket line for better dental.

Publicado na Hungria em 1985, Sátántangó é um romance monstruoso. A ação se concentra na chegada de um homem misterioso, que pode ser um profeta, um vigarista, ou o próprio demônio, a uma aldeia húngara onde a chuva não para de cair. Os habitantes do lugar, um elenco de desajustados e enlouquecidos (camponeses esfarrapados; um médico alcoólatra observando obsessivamente seus vizinhos; jovens perdidas num moinho destroçado; uma garota com deficiência tentando matar seu gato).