Description

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“A book that belongs on the same shelf as Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, and several works by Zoran Zivkovic, Stanislaw Lem and David Markson.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

A collection of entrancing literary fables from an underrated master of the form …

Perfect for the fans of David Mitchell, Julio Cortázar and Steven Barthelme are these 15 dreamlike tales.

Welcome to the fictional universe of C. D. Rose, whose stories seem to be set in some unidentifiable but vaguely Mitteleuropean nation, and likewise have an uncanny sense of timelessness — the time could be some cobblestoned Victorian past era, or the present, or even the future.

• A journalist’s interview with an artist turns into a dizzying roundelay of memory and image.
• Two Russian brothers, one blind and one deaf, build an intricate model town during an interminable train ride across the steppe.
• An annotated discography for the works of a long-lost silent film star turns into a mysterious document of obsession.
• Three Russian sailors must find ways to pass the time on a freighter orphaned in a foreign port.
• A forgotten composer enters a nostalgic dream-world while marking time in a decaying Romanian seaport.

In these 19 dreamlike tales, ghosts of the past mingle with the quiddities of modernity in a bewitching stew where lost masterpieces surface with translations in an invisible language, where image and photograph become mystically entwined, and where the very nature of reality takes on a shimmering sense of possibility and illusion.

“Every madness is logical to its owner,” one of Rose’s characters says. And it is that line — between logic and madness — that Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea walks with such assuredness and imagination.

About the Author

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C.D. ROSE was born in the north of England and has lived in a number of countries, including Italy, France and the USA. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and a PhD from Edge Hill University. Though he currently lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, he is at home anywhere there are dark bars, dusty libraries, and good second-hand bookshops.

Praise For…

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Tor.com Can't Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2024

"...it’s written with a passion, a love for literary fiction. And it’s this love, infectious in quality, that saw me buy all that Rose has written and why you should get your hands on Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea." - Locus Magazine

"The writing is dark and dreamlike, filled with philosophical tangents, evocative metaphors, black comedy, and sly metatextual references...The stories in Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea position art as an antidote to the ravages of time, with a subtle sense of imagination suggesting that, even through the grimmest moods, nothing is impossible." - Foreword

"wit, range, and sheer absurdity...extremely funny...quite affecting...compelling" - PopMatters

"Taut, serene prose draws the reader into the labyrinthine world of these obliquely connected stories ... Rose presents his finest works yet." —Booklist

“A book that belongs on the same shelf as Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, and several works by Zoran Zivkovic, Stanislaw Lem and David Markson.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"This well-rounded assemblage manages to be both entertaining and thought-provoking." -- Publisher's Weekly

"Adventuresome readers will enjoy this hard-to-pigeonhole collection of 19 short stories." --Shelf Awareness

"Disgruntled photographers, bored philosophers, and a social media-obsessed Saint Augustine star in these teasing, twisty tales, where uncanny coincidences abound and narratives meander into surreal meta-fiction." - Daily Mail UK