Strange Escapes

Eight books, $90, infinite worlds

Strange Escapes

When you can’t leave home, this is the way to LA beaches, 19th Century Japan, and 1960s Paris. Wonders abound in eight delicious, surprising, and unfettered fictions of voyages big and small.

The Blue Flowers, Raymond Queneau
Count Luna, Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Adventures in Immediate Irreality, Max Blecher
The Green Child, Herbert Read
The Fool and Other Moral Tales, Anne Serre
Mac’s Problem, Enrique Vila-Matas
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura, Christine Wunnicke
Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls

cover image of the book Adventures in Immediate Irreality

Proclaimed the Kafka of Romania by Eugène Ionesco, Max Blecher wrote this incandescent masterpiece shortly before his untimely death.

cover image of the book The Blue Flowers

A romp through the ages, by a writer “who inspires newsletters, fan clubs, and passionate exegeses.” Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

cover image of the book Count Luna

At once a chase novel, black comedy, and softly keening death song, Count Luna starts off at a gallop and accelerates into warp speed

cover image of the book The Green Child

A visionary masterpiece filled with quicksand portals, revolutionary dictators, and subterranean worlds

cover image of the book Mac's Problem

Enrique Vila-Matas’s new novel is perhaps his greatest: “playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists” (Colm Tóibín)

cover image of the book The Fox and Dr. Shimamura

A delicious mix of East and West, of wonder and irony, The Fox and Dr. Shimamura is a most curious novel

cover image of the book Mrs. Caliban

Now back in print, Mrs. Caliban is “totally unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review) and “something of a miracle” (The New Yorker)