Böcker utgivna av Dedalus Ltd

Ivan Krylov has been loved by Russian people for two hundred years for his Fables, works in which he gently satirizes the manifold weaknesses and failings of human beings, especially figures of authority, while at the same time praising and holding up for emulation the qualities in ordinary people of selflessness, industry, loyalty, love, friendship, perseverance...e ]Solid, earthy common sense and a long acquaintance with the ways of the world lie at the root of Krylov's observations. Some of the Fables are no more than humorous glimpses of life and human nature, or snapshots of the bizarre preoccupations of fantasists, eccentrics, idealists and dreamers. Others offer wry, sardonic glimpses of life, and human relationships and behaviour. Yet others offer wise advice on the conduct of life, or are "cautionary tales" warnings about the consequences of ill-considered behaviour.

The Other Side tells of a dream kingdom which becomes a nightmare, of a journey to Pearl, a mysterious city created deep in Asia, which is also a journey to the depths of the subconcious, or as Kubin himself called it, 'a sort of Baedeker for those lands which are half known to us'. Written in 1908, and more or less half way between Meyrink and Kafka, it was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the artists and writers of the Expressionist generation. ' Expressionist illustrator Kubin wrote this fascinating curio, his only literary work in 1908. A town named Pearl, assembled and presided over by the aptly named Patera, is the setting for his hallucinatory vision of a society founded on instinct over reason. Culminating apocalyptically - plagues of insects, mountains of corpses and orgies in the street - it is worth reading for its dizzying surrealism alone. Though ostensibly a gothic macabre fantasy, it is tempting to read The Other Side as a satire on the reactionary, idealist utopianism evident in German thought in the early twentieth century, highly prescient in its gloom, given later developments. The language often suggests Nietsche. The inevitable collapse of Patera's creation is lent added horror by hindsight. Kubin's depiction of absurd bureaucracy is strongly reminiscent of Kafka's The Trial, and his flawed utopia, situated next to a settlement of supposed savages, brings to mind Huxley's Brave New World; it precedes both novels, and this superb new translation could demonstrate its influence on subsequent modern literature.' Kieron Pim in Time Out It will appeal to fans of Mervyn Peake and readers who like the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque in their reading.

Part traditional fable, part thriller, Tchanaze is a tale of magic and witchcraft, but also a portrayal of a world where traditions are preyed upon and superstitions exploited to hide evil, yet all-too-human truths. Tchanaze is the pride of Sena, a virgin and a beauty coveted throughout the Zambeze region. Mbemba is deemed ugly in comparison and fears she will never find a husband. Her mother employs a witchdoctor to expel the evil spirits from Mbema and put them in Tchanaze, who subsequently dies. But word reaches Campira, a shaman from Sena, that Tchanaze is alive and living in a village further up the valley. He takes Thomossene and Suplera, Tchanaze's parents, on a mission to rescue their daughter and liberate her from the curse. But to do this they must rely on the fearsome satanic witchdoctor, Phanga.

This is the first new translation of En Route since C. Kegan Paul's expurgated original of 1895, which censored or completely cut sections dealing with Durtal's sexual obsessions. Restoring these cuts serves to heighten the drama surrounding Durtal's existential crisis, and gives the novel a perspective that has hitherto been lacking for English-speaking readers. En Route was J.-K. Huysmans' first novel after his conversion to Catholicism and effectively opens a trilogy of novels detailing the spiritual journey of his alter-ego protagonist, Durtal. The novel caused a sensation on its first publication, not just because of the surprisingly frank descriptions of Durtal's obsessive sexual thoughts, but also because Huysmans' was still best known as a disciple of Zola's Naturalist school and few expected this frank and detailed account of a conversion from a writer who only a few years previously had scandalized the Parisian literary world with his Satanic novel of 1891, La-bas.

Human Sadness is a classic Georgian novel translated into English for the first time. Set in the harsh mountain world of Soviet Georgia, Goderdzi Chokheli's 1984 novel is a journey through life, where 'every character is a story', where the real and the magical intermingle. The story is narrated by five distinct voices, each of which was translated by a different translator in order to preserve its individuality. The book begins as a frustrated young novelist comes across a collection of notebooks and letters documenting a strange military campaign, of which his grandmother was a part. One winter, the inhabitants of Chokhi, a remote village - primarily women, children and old men, as most of the young men are away tending to their flocks - decide to reassert their power over the neighbouring villages in Gudamaqari Gorge. Traditionally, Chokhi has reigned supreme in the region, with Chokhian men enjoying the right to claim any women from the surrounding villages as their wives. When a Chokhian boy is turned down, his mother enlists the other villagers in a campaign to conquer the other villages. Along the way, the Chokhians document their progress and collect the worries, memories, folktales and philosophical musings of both their fellow conquerors and the villages they conquer.

While the radio announcer reports new conflicts and atrocities every day and beggars line the pavements outside her comfortable apartment, the old woman struggles to maintain her grip on life. It is a ridiculous age, she tells an acquaintance. Almost everyone she used to know and love is dead. Only her ancient cat and her best friend Malvina are left, and Malvina is rapidly sliding into senility. But the old woman's real and constant grief is the loss of her lover, Nora, ten years ago. In this disintegrating world, her lifeline is an immigrant worker, Gabriela, the home help. But Gabriela is being hounded for money by her dysfunctional family, which includes the self-styled 'terrorist' Dorin. How far can an elderly and cultivated woman, still feisty if increasingly world-weary and prickly, allow herself to be drawn into the affairs of a young woman she does not entirely trust? A brilliant evocation of the challenges of old age, Margherita Giacobino's caustic and funny novel is a tragi-comedy whose unexpected and dramatic conclusion will leave the reader gasping.

A bitter January day on the outskirts of a small Irish university town, and Fox, a reclusive researcher, has just received a phone call. His former girlfriend Clara has brought word that his mentor and love rival Stoyte is gravely ill and, what's more, the dying man has some final things he needs to say. Now Fox must set out through the snow and ice to reckon with the ghosts of the past. Poignant, haunting, and absurdly comic, A Mind of Winter is a tale of lost lives, guilt, punishment, and the cruelties we inflict upon ourselves and others.

In Budapest Noir 1945, 1956 and 1974 merge into 1991 and a nation is allowed to remember the dark days of its past and come to terms with its history before seeking to move on to a different future. The novel starts with Ilona getting a phone installed in 1991. This banal act has huge significance as before the fall of the Communist government Ilona was not allowed to have a phone as her husband took part in the 1956 Uprising and her son escaped in 1974. In 1991 with the aid of a Fullbright Scholarship with his wife and small child Ilona's son Emil returns to Budapest for the first time to create an exhibition about Hungary's transition to democracy. Ilona wants her son to get back what had been stolen from them by the Communists and make them rich while Emil just wants to make art and learn about the past. This clash of values nearly spells disaster. There are flashbacks to the Russian army arriving in 1945 and the uprising in 1956. The novel recounts the dark and tragic events which took place. It is hard not to be moved to tears by what Ilona and her family had to endure. Her story is one that she shared with countless others in Budapest and Hungary during those dark days. Ilona never complains and never talks about the past, it is a weight she carries in silence.

This is the story of a story that plays out in real life. Tom is a stock controller. Though management of the shelves kept him busy in the daytime, his nights were frightful. Again and again he dreamt of guns, conjuring tricks, car chases, burials, disinterments, Martian landscapes and Molly. Tom is new to the Story as it was known to the sinister crew who first appeared in The Runes Have Been Cast. They make their reappearance in this new novel... Molly is a hoplophiliac, Quentin is the sort of person who knows what a hoplophiliac is (someone who likes the use of guns in sex), Lancelyn is terrified of women, Jaimie has committed murder in order to understand what it is like to be evil, Ferdie is a conjuror with bad breath, Bernard is an expert on ghost stories, Mortimer is a thug who works at the The Times Literary Supplement. But Tom is just so ordinary (apart from his visions of Fairyland). Hovering in the background are the ghostly presences of St Ignatius of Loyola, St Joseph of Copertino, Robert Louis Stevenson and M.R. James. Tom's Version is a lament for the sixties and then a mad race towards old age and death.

'The first novel from, the renowned storyteller Hugh Lupton opens with a scene that could be straight out of Thomas Hardy... A helpless observer of the damage that enclosure is doing to his beloved landscape and the people who live there, a young man torn between romantic love for his muse, Mary Joyce, and the consequences of a moment's folly with a woman named Betsy Jackson, Clare comes to see that ' the bright world has begun, one by one, to break its promises.' Yet, while the immediate causes of his grief and disillusionment are personal, they are always intricately linked to what is happening to the land - and it is to Lupton's great credit that, in this engaging and lyrical novel, he brings this relationship between emotional and psychological life and the environment into play at every turn. This vision transforms a bittersweet love story that takes place 'seven generations ago' into a study of the politics of land use, revealing the true nature of British agriculture as systematic exploitation of land and people whose tragic consequences Lupton notes in an afterward, 'we are reaping the full harvest of today.' John Burnside in The Times