Locus Solus

Author(s): Roussel, Raymond, Cuningham, Rupert Copeland,
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 24/08/2017,
Pagination: 224 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Calder Publications Ltd,
Published By: Alma Books Ltd,
Book Classification: Classic fiction (pre c 1945),
Dimensions: 130 x 198 x 17
ISBN13/EAN/SKU: 9780714544564

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Based, like the earlier Impressions of Africa, on uniquely eccentric principles of composition, this book invites the reader to enter a world which in its innocence and extravagance is unlike anything in the literature of the twentieth century. Cantarel, a scholarly scientist, whose enormous wealth imposes no limits upon his prolific ingenuity, is taking a group of visitors on a tour of 'Locus Solus', his secluded estate near Paris. One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind. An African mud-sculpture representing a naked child; a road-mender's tool which, when activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth; a vast aquarium in which humans can breathe and in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory. By each item in Cantarel's exhibition there hangs a tale - a tale such as only that esteemed genius Roussel could tell. As the inventions become more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of the author's stories grow to match them; the flow of his imagination becomes a flood and the reader is swept along in a torrent of wonder and hilarity.