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...

Ever feel like the whole world is conspiring against you? Jonathon Fairfax can’t even get on the London Underground without bumping into someone he’s desperate to avoid – like Rachel, his first love, who demolished his heart eleven years ago. She tells him that her terrifying uncle (a man...

A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life....

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....

Lote is an exploration of aesthetic, beauty and the ephemeral realm in which they exist. This witty and luxurious tale delves into the opposing mental structures and historical platforms of abnegating Thought Artists, and extravagant aesthete black artists....

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...

After a domestic terrorist unleashes a dirty bomb in Manhattan in 1970, making the borough uninhabitable, FBI Agent Uli Sarkisian finds himself in a world that is suddenly unrecognizable, as the United States faces its greatest immigration crisis ever: finding housing for millions of its own...

The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age....

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...

In its first time in audio and with an introduction written and read by poet Billy Collins, 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. Richard Brautigan's world is one of gentle...

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. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin...

Haunted by the ghosts of past, present, and future spies, Aiken is trapped in a lethal battle with Havana intelligence officers desperate to discover the CIA's top spy hidden inside Fidel Castro's government.

Oblomov is one of the most distinctive characters in Russian literature - within a short time following its publication in 1859, the novel spawned its own saying: ‘Oblomovism’! From the pen of Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891) emerged a portrait of a young man, Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov, who represented...

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.

The BRAND NEW deliciously dark thriller from Sarah Bonner, bestselling author of How to Slay at Work! Must-read for fans of Katy Brent, Bella Mackie and Julie Mae Cohen ☀️🏝️ You’d kill for a holiday like this one… Chloe has spent months planning the murder of her husband, Scott...

Isaac, a young Australian photographer, is travelling through Europe. His whole life he has longed for the sophistication and wealth of the Europe of his father’s stories....

Cupid has terrible aim. Valentine’s Day should bring romance, flying hearts, and one quiet dinner with Anna Albertini’s sexy, secretive boyfriend, Aiden Devlin.

Stars—they’re just like us! Except much, much worse. Rose Aslani is mid-bikini wax when her phone lights up with a notification: Famed scam artist Poppy Hastings will be released from prison today. It’s been two years since Rose—a first-generation Middle Eastern American, functional...

An outrageous "novel" by the author of I Smell Esther Williams. In this fiendishly original novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed...

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

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....

On the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, Doctor Quintana pines for head nurse Menéndez while he and his colleagues embark on a grisly series of experiments to investigate the line between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes....

Ijon Tichy, Lem's Candide of the Cosmos, encounters bizarre civilizations and creatures in space that serve to satirize science, the rational mind, theology, and other icons of human pride....

“A unique alien invasion story that focuses on the human and the myriad ways we see and don’t see our own world. Mesmerizing.” —Jeff VanderMeer A blend of searing social commentary and speculative fiction, Chana Porter’s fresh, pointed debut explores a strange new world in the wake of...

A controversial best seller from one of Norway’s most intelligent and highly-regarded novelists When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled 20 years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer...

Haunted by the ghosts of past, present, and future spies, Aiken is trapped in a lethal battle with Havana intelligence officers desperate to discover the CIA's top spy hidden inside Fidel Castro's government. Aiken must betray Nathan Muir and Tom Bishop—exposing CIA operations that link Cuba, China, and Venezuela in a startling conspiracy—in order to rescue the woman he loves...all in a single night without leaving the hotel room of his interrogation.

An award-winning novel from an international rising star – spanning ancient and modern China – in the dazzlingly inventive style of Susanna Clarke, David Mitchell, and Charles Yu Inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China, Ghost Cities follows multiple narratives, including one...

An award-winning novel from an international rising star – spanning ancient and modern China – in the dazzlingly inventive style of Haruki Murakami and Kaliane Bradley 'Lu has a brilliant mind for style, language, pace and ideas, and this is a funny and fascinating book that I can’t wait...

The gentle giant Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Köhler’s adult education classes in physics, he is convinced that disaster is imminent. And so, he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to convince her of the danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter. Otherwise, he works for the Boss (the head of a local neo-Nazi gang), who has taken him under his wing and gotten him work as a graffiti cleaner and also a one-room apartment in the small eastern German town of Kana.

This is the story of Evan Evanescent, a quality assessor, who becomes mired in a surrealistic web of corporate psychology, metaphysical guilt, and the suffocating nature of internalised standards. He develops an obsession with an enigmatic poem which leads him to perceive a silent, invisible...