Impressions D’Afrique

The long-awaited new translation of the most dazzling and unclassifiable work

of fiction in any language.

In a mythical African land, some shipwrecked and uniquely talented passengers

stage a grand gala to entertain themselves and their captor, the great

chieftain Talou. In performance after bizarre performance—starring, among

others, a zither-playing worm, a marksman who can peel an egg at fifty yards,

a railway car that rolls on calves’ lungs, and fabulous machines that paint,

weave, and compose music—Raymond Roussel demonstrates why it is that Andre?

Breton termed him “the greatest mesmerizer of modern times.” But even more

remarkable than the mind-bending events Roussel details—as well as their

outlandish, touching, or tawdry backstories—is the principle behind the

novel’s genesis, a complex system of puns and double-entendres that

anticipated (and helped inspire) such movements as Surrealism and Oulipo.

Newly translated and with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti, this edition of

_Impressions of Africa_ vividly restores the humor, linguistic legerdemain,

and conceptual wonder of Raymond Roussel’s magnum opus.