The Other Side

I first read this book over 35 years ago and it has remained with me ever since. It is little known, infrequently in print and I actually began to wonder if I had imagined it. I was reminded of it recently when involved in a debate about the existence of shell.I have reread it. It is flawed but it is a masterpiece. The first 60% is unputdownable. The last 40% could be shorter.One thing which is rarely said about the book is that it is VERY funny. Even at it's darkest, which is black as the blackest black thing, it bristles with little jokes. Think about the paintings of Hieronimus Bosch (spelling) and you will get the picture. It is also surprisingly modern in its direct way of writing and wonderfully strange.I don't pretend to understand its philosophy but I believe it has its roots in Gnosticism and makes more than a passing nod at Buddhism. It is deeply pessimistic but eventually achieves a kind of weird serenity.The scene in the dairy is also one of the most haunting pieces of writing I have yet discovered.The word "entrails" appears in it much more often than it does in any other book I have ever read and I am a bowel surgeon.This book is said to have inspired Kafka and will appeal to all those who have glimpsed behind the curtain and seen the mechanisms which move the scenery.Fans of Haruki Murakami are particularly invited.

A difficult book to describe, since so much of its impact comes from the atmosphere of strangeness and the unsettling visionary quality of some passages. It recounts how the narrator, an artist, comes to live in the Dreamland, daily life in this odd place ruled by a distant and god-like monarch, and its ultimate catastrophic end.So what's it like? It bears a resemblance to some of Haruki Murakami's work - especially Hard Boiled Wonderland. In fact I wonder if Murakami has read it? The only other remotely comparable work is Gustav Meyrink's The Golem - another obscure work by a European author dealing in the night-time of the mind.Actually it is unlike anything. It's not even like itself.

Not horror, not exactly, but it contains some horrible and scary passages. Not a dystopia but it tells the story of a decadent utopic city.This is a good book. Not perfect, not great, but unique which is better than good.

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!

Kubin walks us through a dream realm of clashing unrealities and points towards an Eastern sense of detachment as a means of escaping the disaster of the dream realm. A prophetic work that outlined the catastrophe that eventually engulfed mitteleuropa during the First World War. The haunting visions characteristic of Kubin's drawings find a home in his captivating prose.

Very Poe like in atmosphere. Genuinely creepy. Very well written and harrowing. A warning. The last third of this book is VERY graphic, powerful and will have you getting several WTF? Moments!

This is the novel of Unutopia. It was well developed until the last chapter which seemed to be a re-written Book of Revelations. It was worth reading, but I started skimming toward the end.

This has got to be one of the strangest books I have ever read. It starts off with the narrator being approached by a messenger who informs him that an old classmate has started his own community called the Dream Realm. He is eager to go but his wife has some reservations and has to be talked into it. Once they pass through the gates of the Dream Realm, in an obvious moment of foreshadowing, our protagonist's wife experiences a feeling of dread pass over her.The next part of the book describes the Dream Realm and its peculiarities. It is a place where the sun never shines and the sky is always cloudy and gray. Eventually the author notices that everyone seems to be under some kind of spell. Further descriptions make it seem as though Claus Patera, the founder and master of the city, has a telepathic connection with all the residents and exercises some kind of mind control over them. At this point I was intrigued by the many mysterious aspects of the Dream Realm and couldn't wait to get to the end and figure out what was behind all of it.The last part of the book gets really weird. A bunch of animals run loose through the city, driving everyone out of their homes. Just about every building starts to crumble and decay. Everyone suddenly starts acting crazy. The last few chapters are filled with lots of WTF moments. The one thing I didn't like much about this book is that I felt like a lot of questions went unanswered. There's all this weird stuff going on in the city, but you never find out exactly how it came to be. Why is the city always dull and gray? How did Claus Patera come to possess his supernatural powers, and why did he decide to use buildings associated with traumatic events to build his kingdom? I was hoping I would get to find out by the end of the book, but a lot of these questions weren't answered to my satisfaction. You just have this really weird book, and it's not fully explained.

I have a weekness for horror.