The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece—one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, rel...

Toward dusk, in the Summer of the year, a man dressed in a frock coat and top hat, and carrying a cane, crept through the underbrush bordering the corral of the Buckler farm. As he moved, small twigs snapped, fell and were silent. His knees were green from wounded shrubbery and grass, and his outspread hands tore unheeded plants. His wrists hurt him and he rested from time to time, always caring for his hat and knotted yellow cane, blowing through his moustache. Dew had been falling, cover...

“…all Ladies should carry about with them [this almanack], as the Priest his Breviary, as the Cook his Recipes, as the Doctor his Physic, as the Bride her Fears, and as the Lion his Roar!”Unquestionably unique in its execution of narrative, Djuna Barnes’ The Ladies Almanack is an experimental roman à clef that intertwines fiction, myth, and parody into one of the boldest pieces of lesbian literature published in the twentieth century.Priva...

A WIRED "BOOK YOU NEED TO READ" • For fans of the worlds of Philip K. Dick, Squid Game, and Severance: An absorbing tale of corporate intrigue, political unrest, unsolved mysteries, and the havoc wreaked by one company’s monomaniacal endeavor to build the world’s first space elevatorAn “antic, madcap noir with flair" (Wired) and“fast-paced cyberpunk story” (The New York Times Book Review) from one of South Korea'...

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.'I have quite changed my mind. I am going to run away and become a boy.'In these three stories, written by Djuna Barnes under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, three characters find themselves on the brink of a sexual awakening - accompanied by guns, whips, and worldly innuendo.A fourteen-year-old girl plans to become '...

From the author of Nightwood, Djuna Barnes has written a book that is all that she was, and must still be vulgar, beautiful, defiant, witty, poetic, and a little mad.Told as through a kaleidoscope, the chronicle of the Ryder family is a bawdy tale of eccentricity and anarchy; through sparkling detours and pastiche, cult author Djuna Barnes spins an audacious, intricate story of sexuality, power, and praxis.Ryder, like its namesake, Wendell Ryder, is many t...

For as many reasons as there are days in a year... a century... or millennia, some novelists choose to write incognito. By using an alias, pen name; or, as the French so beautifully say, nom de plume, they'll cloak their true identities.The nom de plume, while convenient, does present a bit of a conundrum for the writer. Whose backstory or biography should an author employ introducing themselves to their reading public? Their own, or their literary double's. Enter the crea...

"A Book" is a mix of short stories, poetry, plays, and illustrations, reflecting Barnes' experimental and eclectic approach to writing. The pieces vary in tone, from humorous and satirical to dark and introspective. The collection is often seen as a precursor to her later, more fully developed works, where themes of isolation, identity, and human relationships are more deeply explored.The writings in "A Book" display Barnes' unique voice—one that blends modernist experimentation with Gothi...

The best of Djuna Barnes’s dark, droll, incisive short fiction, spanning her all-too-pief career, edited and introduced by Merve Emre.Djuna Barnes is rightly remembered for Nightwood, her peakthrough and final novel: a hallmark of modernist literature, championed by T. S. Eliot, and one of the first, strangest, and most pilliant novels of love between women to be published in the twentieth century. Barnes’s career began long before Nightwood, howe...

"Lesbianism, its flories and sorows, is the subject and quest of this marvelously erverse sentimental journey by Nightwood's author... A striking lesbian mainfesto and a deft parody."-Library JournalBlending fiction, myth, and revisionary parody and accompanied by the author's delightful illustrations, Ladies Almanac is also a brilliant modernist composition and arguably the most audacious lesbian text of its time. While the book pokes fun at the wealthy exp...

Alice Hollywell, the young spitfire from Hollywood and her best friend, the poor little rich girl Em Martín from nearby Bel Air, CA, are stationed on a remote military base in West Texas in the mid 1970s.Worldly Alice "Hollywood" Hollywell is notorious for changing "teams" without notice. Em is shy and seemingly sheltered and has a secret. Despite their differences, their friendship blossoms into something they never imagined. The arrest of their friend Whitey, and rumors about an ...

A “striking lesbian manifesto and a deft parody” by the acclaimed author of Nightwood. **(—**Library Journal)Blending fiction, myth, and revisionary parody, Ladies Almanack is a brilliant modernist composition and arguably the most audacious lesbian text of its time. While the book pokes fun at the wealthy Paris expatriates who were Barnes' literary contemporaries and remains controversial today, it seems...