Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. The critic Augst Nemo selected seven short stories of the absurd for his appreciation: - A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka - Before the Law by Franz Kafka - Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft - Andrey Semyonovich by Daniil Kharms - A sonnet by Daniil Kharms - Symphony no. 2 by Daniil Kharms For more books with interesting themes, be sure to check the other books in this collection!

Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. The critic Augst Nemo selected seven short stories of the absurd for his appreciation: - A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka - Before the Law by Franz Kafka - Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft - Andrey Semyonovich by Daniil Kharms - A sonnet by Daniil Kharms - Symphony no. 2 by Daniil Kharms

Beneath the glare of three purple suns, three travelers - an old Mexican woman, an automated jeep, and a brontosaurus - have trudged across a desert for hundreds of years. They do not know if the desert has an end, and if it does, what they might find there. Sometimes they come across perfectly-preserved cities, but without a single inhabitant, and never a drop of rain. Worse still, they have no memory of their lives before the desert. Only at night, in dreams, do they recall fragments of their past identities. But night also brings the madness of the sandstorms, which jolt them out of one body and into another in a game of metaphysical musical chairs. In their disorientation and dysfunction, they have killed each other dozens of times, but they cannot die. Where are they? How can they escape? From this quest form, Stepan Chapman has fashioned a poignant and powerful story of redemption in which pathos is leavened by humor and pain is softened by comfort. It is the story of deranged angels, deadly music boxes, and cellular transformation. It is also the tale of Alex who wanted to be a machine, Naomi, who spent 20 years as a corpsicle, and Eva, who escaped the whale emperor of her native land. The novel alternates between the three characters' attempts to discover where they are with their search for identity through the dream stories which reveal their fragmented pasts. The Troika's satisfying conclusion brings closure to one of the most harrowing journeys ever into the heart of surrealism and the human soul. The Troika has been praised as visionary and completely original by such writers as John Shirley, Kathe Koja, Brian Stableford, Alan Brennert, Lance Olsen, Kathleen AnnGoonan, Brian Evenson, Paul Riddell, and Don Webb. The author's work has frequently been compared to that of Philip K. Dick, Terry Southern, Kurt Vonnegut, Mervyn Peake, Angela Carter, and other fabulists of the first rank. The Troika confirms that status and is destined to become a cult classic of fabulist fiction. The Troika is being backed by extensive promotion and advertising in applicable national magazine markets such as SF Age, with distribution in both the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime. In his will, Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, but Brod ignored these instructions. His work has influenced a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th and 21st centuries. The critic August Nemo selected seven emblematic short stories of this author for his appreciation: The Metamorphosis A Hunger Artist In the penal colony The Judgment Before the Law A Country Doctor A Report to an Academy

DIVFive great stories in original German with new, literal English translations on facing pages: "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgment," "In the Penal Colony," "A Country Doctor" and "A Report to an Academy." /div

"A master absurdist...Highly recommended." —The New York Times Before the success of her debut SF-and-fantasy novel All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders was a rising star in SF and fantasy short fiction. Collected in a mini-book format, here—for the first time in print—are six of her quirky, wry, engaging best: In "The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model," aliens reveal the terrible truth about how humans were created—and why we'll never discover aliens. "As Good as New" is a brilliant twist on the tale of three wishes, set after the end of the world. "Intestate" is about a family reunion in which some attendees aren't quite human anymore—but they're still family. "The Cartography of Sudden Death" demonstrates that when you try to solve a problem with time travel, you now have two problems. "Six Months, Three Days" is the story of the love affair between a man who can see the one true foreordained future, and a woman who can see all the possible futures. They're both right, and the story won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. And "Clover," exclusively written for this collection, is a coda to All the Birds in the Sky, answering the burning question of what happened to Patricia's cat. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From the acclaimed author of Brothers and To Live: a major new novel that limns the joys and sorrows of life in contemporary China. Yang Fei was born on a moving train. Lost by his mother, adopted by a young switchman, raised with simplicity and love, he is utterly unprepared for the tempestuous changes that await him and his country. As a young man, he searches for a place to belong in a nation that is ceaselessly reinventing itself, but he remains on the edges of society. At age forty-one, he meets an accidental and unceremonious death. Lacking the money for a burial plot, he must roam the afterworld aimlessly, without rest. Over the course of seven days, he encounters the souls of the people he’s lost. As Yang Fei retraces the path of his life, we meet an extraordinary cast of characters: his adoptive father, his beautiful ex-wife, his neighbors who perished in the demolition of their homes. Traveling on, he sees that the afterworld encompasses all the casualties of today’s China—the organ sellers, the young suicides, the innocent convicts—as well as the hope for a better life to come. Yang Fei’s passage maps the contours of this vast nation—its absurdities, its sorrows, and its soul. Vivid, urgent, and panoramic, The Seventh Day affirms Yu Hua’s place as the standard-bearer of modern Chinese fiction.

As featured in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The New York Times Book Review. Daniil Kharms has long been heralded as one of the most iconoclastic writers of the Soviet era, but the full breadth of his achievement is only in recent years, following the opening of Kharms's archives, being recognized internationally. Thanks to the efforts of translator and poet Matvei Yankelevich, English language readers now have a comprehensive collection of the prose and poetry that secured Kharms's literary reputation a reputation that grew in Russia even as the Soviet establishment worked to suppress it. Both a major contribution for American scholars and students of Russian literature and an exciting discovery for fans of contemporary writers as eclectic as George Saunders, John Ashbery, and Martin McDonagh, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writing of Daniil Kharmsis an invaluable collection for readers of innovative writing everywhere. Translated from the Russian by Matvei Yankelevich

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, Camus's masterpiece gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. Behind the intrigue, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.