Customer Reviews (5)

A brilliant beginning...
When I began reading this novel, I was highly impressed with the narrative tone, the dream-like coherence of the story. The narrator is invited by an enigmatic figure to live in a kingdom on the other side (supposedly in some hazy realm between Europe and Asia). He brings his wife along. Eventually the wife dies. The narrator is left alone to fend for himself in the strange world of Pearl. I recognized the satire, the social commentary. For the first half, I was enthralled.

But I found the tale began to deteriorate into this rather brash and endless series of vignettes, all of which becoming more and more grotesque. Either the author was trying too hard to bombard his reader with imagery or he had other motives, I felt the novel became far too crowded with the absurd to merit any intelligence. I felt the absurdity began to wear thin because of this narrative 'kablooie'. The city of Pearl deteriorates, an apocalyptic vision of the end reminiscent of Revelations.

It is a dark satire, I understood that from the beginning but when it became extravagant to the point of nausea, I found myself flipping through the last pages until the end. A brilliant beginning but the novel ends with a visionary gauntlet making the last bit feel like the last stretch of a pseudo-intellectual race. I feel Kafka is superior to Kubin in that there is a genuine restraint and artistry to his ability to handle the absurd. Again, the idea and beginning is brilliant, but the ending is novice, leaving one dissatisfied and uneasy about the time spent finishing this book.

amazing
reading this book, I assumed it was a commentary on WW1 and WW2.nope 1908.and that alone makes this book amazing.

the first parts of this book have impressive oblique social satire and are very deep (but a bit melancholy)the last section of this book is pure mayhem with a bugs bunny warner brothers cartoon tone thats completely entertaining and hilarious.yet keeps up the biting social satire.

From pedestrian beginnings to a searing nightmare of reason.
One senses that this indulgent and dazzling exercise in ferocious derangement and, arguably, allegory, must read less awkwardly in the original German. You will not read this for its literary style, which is clumsy at times, but for its pure, rarefied, winningly repulsive air of pre-War Euro-decadence, for its uncanny presentiments of the coming horrors of the 20th century, and for its profligate richness of bizarre imagery. The book is fuel for dreams of the weirdest kind. This is appropriate, because in it Kubin seeks to portray a "Dream Realm" -- very far from the one Morpheus rules over in The Sandman -- created at the whim of a ludicrously wealthy and myserious aristocrat. This Dream Realm, aka the city of Pearl, is situated in Asia, but represents, among other things, a vision of pre-industrial Europe stagnating, suppurating, and sinking into its indolent self -- but at least avoiding the horrors of modernization and liberalism! With a wink, then (the book is quite funny in a scabrous way), Kubin deals with such issues as race, the media, psychoanalysis, religion (gnosticism in particular), death, and sexuality. He does so inconclusively, but with unflagging inventiveness, and a real eye for the startling mental picture and the horrific detail.

masterpiece of surrealism
Perhaps I should have said a masterpiece of fantasticism.I believe the author was an artist in the school of the fantastic or fantasmic in the early 20th century.His only work of literature, this book is truly one of the strangest pieces I have ever read.I was initially introduced to it by my college German prof who had a love for this kind of apochryphal lit, and passed on that love to me.I have since read this many, many times.I don't want to give too much away, but the basic story has a young man and his wife invited to live in a newly founded realm in Asia.This realm has been founded by an old school chum, Patera, whose concept is that only things that enhance moods can be permitted into the country, and these things should usually be old and have a kind of emotional evocative power, so to speak.The young couple find themselves in a realm of moods, both depression and manic, and it is a very strange trip, indeed.I recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have a compulsive need for analytical, linear reason in a book!

A prophetic classic
Two aspects make this book worth reading today:
It was written 1908, before the world wars, and
its haunting images were most prophetic.
Secondly, a key idea makes this books both a psycholgical
and surreal experience: The mood of a man and the state of his
soul are mirrored in the physical and social state
of the city he reigns.

Alfred Kubin is better known for his illustrations (of say
E.A. Poe's short stories), and this is his only work of
fiction.

If you want a book where everything becomes clear at the end,
you want something else. If you enjoy being disturbed,
go ahead and read it! ... Read more

Product Description
Kubin is irrefutably one of the most original talents of his
generation. Whether painting directly from his hallucinatory
visions or illustrating the works of such literary giants as
Balzac, Poe, Dostoevsky, and Gogol, Kubin eschewed the
decorative artistry of earlier Austrian art. Instead, he was
drawn to life s dark undertones, represented in his work
through his morbid subject matter and frenetic style. Filled
with horrific yet fully realized imaginings that were eerily
prescient of the era to come, this volume is certain to
introduce Kubin to a wider audience perhaps to an entire
generation who see in art a way to contend with the upheaval
and tribulation of their own time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Alfred Kubin
Alfred Kubin: Drawings, 1897-1909One of the very underestimated artists. This book collects his most importants drawings, which in fact pioneered a majority of later findings in surrealism, romantisizm, symbolism etc. in 20th century. His later things are much less interesting, in my opinion, where he not only changed his style to more "curvy", but also changed the subjects to more moderate. So, this book is really unique in emphasizing his main achevements. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"MUST-READ" FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THE "FANTASTIC"
Only novel of the artist and illustrator Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), link between pre-World War I Austro-Hungary and the modern, post-war Central Europe. As such immensely important. Oppressive atmosphere throughout. Excellent example of the "Fantastic" in the literature of the German-speaking countries. ... Read more