Moravagine

by Blaise Cendrars, Zsuzsó Pennings (translator)

Een jonge psychiater loopt stage in Waldensee, een van de modernste psychiatrische klinieken van Europa, waar voornamelijk mensen uit de hogere kringen verblijven. Een van zijn patiënten daar is Moravagine: het kwaad, de waanzin en de destructieve energie, belichaamd in de laatste afstammeling van een in ballingschap levende Hongaarse koninklijke familie. Ze worden vrienden, en de jonge arts besluit Moravagine te laten ontsnappen en hem op zijn vlucht te begeleiden. Vanaf dat moment beschrijft de roman de avonturen en de vernietigende activiteiten van Moravagine.
Moravagine is een merkwaardig en verontrustend werk. Het is een episch gedicht over brute en kwade krachten, over geweld en vernietiging.

Genres: Fiction, France, Classics, Horror, French Literature, Literature, Novels

267 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Frédéric Louis Sauser, better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.

His father, an inventor-businessman, was Swiss, his mother Scottish. He spent his childhood in Alexandria, Naples, Brindisi, Neuchâtel, and numerous other places, while accompanying his father, who endlessly pursued business schemes, none successfully.
At the age of fifteen, Cendrars left home to travel in Russia, Persia, China while working as a jewel merchant; several years later, he wrote about this in his poem, Transiberien. He was in Paris before 1910, where he got in touch with several names of Paris' bélle époque: Guillaume Apollinaire, Modigliani, Marc Chagall and many more. Cendrars then traveled to America, where he wrote his first long poem Pâques à New-York. The next year appeared The Transsibérien.

When he came back to France, I World War was started and he joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to the front line in the Somme where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915. During the attacks in Champagne in September 1915 that Cendrars lost his right arm. He described this war experience in the books La Main coupée.

After the war he returned to Paris, becaming an important part of the artistic community in Montparnasse. There, among others, used to meet with other writers such as Henry Miller, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway.

During the 1920's he published two long novels, Moravagine and Les Confessions de Dan Yack. Into the 1930’s published a number of “novelized” biographies or volumes of extravagant reporting, such as L’Or, based on the life of John August Sutter, and Rhum, “reportage romance” dealing with the life and trials of Jean Galmont, a misfired Cecil Rhodes of Guiana.

La Belle Epoque was the great age of discovery in arts and letters. Cendrars, very much of the epoch, was sketched by Caruso, painted by Léon Bakst, by Léger, by Modigliani, by Chagall; and in his turn helped discover Negro art, jazz, and the modern music of Les Six. His home base was always Paris, for several years in the Rue de Savoie, later, for many years, in the Avenue Montaigne, and in the country, his little house at Tremblay-sur Mauldre (Seine-et-Oise), though he continued to travel extensively. He worked for a short while in Hollywood in 1936, at the time of the filming of Sutter’s Gold. From 1924 to 1936, went so constantly to South America. This life globertrottering life was pictured in his book Bourlinguer, published in 1948.
Another remarkable works apparead in the 40s were L’Homme Foudroyé (1945), La Main Coupée (1946), Le Lotissement du Ciel (1949), that constitute his best and most important work. His last major work was published in 1957, entitled Trop, C’est Trop.

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Sources:

- http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_...

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beginning was the rhythm and only eventually the rhythm gained corporeality…
Blaise Cendrars boldly bases his novel on the concept of Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics.

Hysteria… Freud had taken up the problem, had gone into it more amply, more profoundly, had lifted it, extracted it from its purely experimental and clinical domain to make of it a kind of pataphysics of social, religious and artistic pathology…

Blaise Cendrars doesn’t write, he literally crochets a morbidly pathological lace of maleficent words.

Diseases are. We do not make or unmake them at will. We are not their masters. They make us, they form us. They may even have created us. They belong to that state of activity which we call life. They may be its main activity.

Moravagine is a quintessence of villainy, he is an incarnation of mental pathology, he becomes a metaphor of evil… Evil is indestructible and sinister pataphysics reigns…
And what about metaphysics? “Metaphysics should be placed in the museum of folklore.”
Reductio ad absurdum is a part of human nature.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you only read one book this year about a diminutive gimp who enjoys disemboweling women, make it this one. It will at least save you the bother of having to find another one. And there's certainly no book quite like Blaise Cendrars' Moravagine, a tonally irregular, provocative artifact of the 1920s French avant garde. But don't be scared off by the phrase 'French avant garde' and its omens of obfuscation and aesthetic prickliness. Moravagine is, without qualification, a very readable book. Its style is mostly conventional, with a strong narrative momentum, but its substance suggests an author whose powers of concentration or fortitude were limited. The novel starts out (apparently) as a discourse on madness and disease, delivered by an iconoclastic young psychiatrist, who decides to release the criminally aberrant Moravagine from his confinement and accompany him on various escapades, including a stint in Russian terrorism, a quest for mythic treasure in the American Southwest, a delirious ride down the Amazon, and an apprenticeship with a drunken inventor. There's not much cohesion or balance to be found here, and to search for 'a point' to all this is certainly to invite accusations of being a spoilsport, but all in all, Moravagine was enjoyable enough—for a book about a diminutive gimp who enjoys disemboweling women. And Blaise Cendrars has the rare good sense to know when enough is enough.

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Circle Reads 17

Rating: 3 sickened stars of five

The Publisher Says: At once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire. Released from a hospital for the criminally insane by his starstruck psychiatrist (the narrator of the book), who foresees a companionship in crime that will also be an unprecedented scientific collaboration, Moravagine travels from Moscow to San Antonio to deepest Amazonia, engaged in schemes and scams as, among other things, terrorist, speculator, gold prospector, and pilot. He also enjoys a busy sideline in rape and murder. At last, the two friends return to Europe—just in time for World War I, when "the whole world was doing a Moravagine."

This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."

My Review: Dr. Science, the eunuch-like shrink of mass-murdering rapist and all-around criminal Moravagine, relates this hideous tale of debauchery, rapine, pillage, murder, and general good times after springing the title character from the insane asylum where Science worked with him. Their world travels on the eve of the Great War involve blood, misery, and death for everyone but themselves.

Moravagine, literally “death by female genitalia,” is not someone you want to meet. Hannibal Lecter was positively cuddlesome by Moravagine's standards. Science, in his neutral and neutered language, presents the facts of their horrible, horrible crime spree in a way that left me nauseated but curiously unmoved: “Which mother would not prefer to kill and devour her children if she could be sure in doing so of binding to her and keeping her male, of being permeated by him, absorbing him from below, digesting him, letting him be macerated within her in a state reduced to that of foetus, and carrying him thus her life long in womb?”

This is a slasher movie waiting to happen. I've heard others describe it as funny. Not to me. Distastefully misogynistic. Appallingly bloody. I enjoyed one thing about reading the book: The author's evident fury and outrage at a world that tacitly accepts the dehumanizing and belittling effects of Modernity without so much as a bleat of resistance. Resistance, you see, is futile.

Revolting. Fascinating. Deeply unclean.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

What to say about this. I know it is highly rated as a modernist classic; and make no mistake it is very inventive with some fantastical scenes and stories. Many reviews I have seen rave about it and compare it to Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Even Henry Miller loved it. I can understand all that and I know it careers through the early twentieth century taking apart many sacred cows and exposing much hypocrisy.
However I did not like it. The title sets the tone; Moravagine means Death to (or by) vagina and the books tone is mercilessly misogynistic. It is about a young psychiatrist when discovers a prisoner in an institution (Moravagine) who has various deformities who is there because he murdered his fiancee. He decides it would be a good idea to let him free so they could have adventures together because the fellow is interesting (and a son of the King of Hungary). They then travel together for the rest of the book moving through Europe, Russia (where they attempt to organise a revolution in 1905 as part of what appears to be an anarchist grouping), the US, South America and back to Europe. The novel concludes in the First World War.
Periodically during their travels Moravagine rapes and murders women (no vivid descriptions, it is all very matter of fact and part of his condition) and the female characters are treated abominably. The author appears to have no opinion on this aspect of his character. Maybe he is making a point, maybe there is a deeper meaning which I am missing. Actually it is just unpleasant and pointless. It is as though the victims (mostly unamed and undescribed) have no importance or significance; they do not matter. Moravagine is portrayed as the next stage in human evolution and is above normal considerations (I've heard that sort of superiority argument before; Master Race!!).
I know it is only a novel and I am not as a rule squeamish about what I read, but there is such a deep level of unpleasantness here, especially towards women that, for me there was just no point ot it.
Rant over.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come for the child murder, stay for the adventure? Absolutely!

Foregoing the absolute nuttiness of how beyond almost anyone in the 1920’s ‘experimental’ fiction squadron Cendrars was by dint of his kitchen sink/spaghetti-stuck wall/fuckall approach to mechanical design ALONE, the book is really just a swashbuckling adventure that circumnavigates the globe (and possibly Mars) looking for a good time. Amazonian jungle goddess-virgins; early aeronautic enthusiasts; goldmines in the US; a very Big War in Europe—tip of iceberg.

But that ending, though. Cendrars reaches rare air there, and the wit and heart with which it is achieved endears him to me possibly beyond the narrative itself. I didn’t mean to paraphrase “I Will” in the last sentence.

I, idiot.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's just say the title translates as both death TO and death BY vagina. It's part pulp adventure tale, part embodied manifesto whose main message is that madness and disease are the guiding forces on earth, and all Greatest Dada Novel ever.

The early parts are a Rabelaisian misogynistic fever dream across Europe and into Russia where Moravagine, a dadaist writ GIGANTIC, spearheads a revolution. But then, after fleeing to the United States, the narrative kind of settles down (after the death of the vicious vagina and her foetus), Moravagine becomes more guiding spirit than main character, and we get a proto-magical realist (real deal magical realist) novel coursing through the Americas, meeting larger-than-life swindlers, Blue Indians, and a dapper orangutan, but all bedded in naturalistic detail and local arcana.

Then back to Europe for the outbreak of WWI where Moravagine disappears then reappears totally bonkers thinking he's an inhabitant of Mars; a claim not discounted by the narrator.

Though I've never read B. Traven, this book (and Cendrars himself for that matter) reminds me of him. Mystery man and self-mythologizer, Indiana Jones-type adventurer, and like one man compounded of a dozen men, bewilderingly human, composed of nothing but élan vital.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blaise Cendrars is one of those characters that one can't believe that they actually exist. His novel reads like a demented Sam Fuller film with a script by Luis Bunuel. Well, that how it reads to me!

Nevertheless this early 20th Century classic is sort of the door that leads to the madness of that Century. It's a feverish adventure tale that goes beyond reason into a form of madness. And Cendrars was, this one-arm manic, was one of the greats. No doubt about that!

[Mel || mel.the.mood.reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has Brett Easton Ellis ever credited Moravagine as a source of inspiration for his work? Because wow is there so much similar DNA between this titular character and Patrick Bateman. This was a truly vile headspace to be dropped into as a reader, yet even at its most unhinged, the narrative remains unnervingly compelling. This is not a book to enter into blindly, but for those that can stomach it, a truly fascinating and surprisingly philosophical depiction of the depravity of mankind.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't decide whether to give this 3 stars or 4 stars (not that anyone would care either way). Cendrars seems to have hated this book..., having begun it in 1917, he was still trying to finish it as he crossed the Equator on a boat to Rio in 1924. He simply couldn't stand the "turgid, pretentious style" to which he had committed himself. I don't disagree.... It made him vomit, this book.... 3 stars..., bah!

The problem may, of course, rather be that I don't understand Surrealism. The extravagant expressions of a diseased or troubled or excessive mind -- it's all well and good. But as imaginings -- they don't have much meaning -- and so after awhile..., it's hard to tell one lunatic's ravings from another. And tedium sets in... But, of course, this is rather subjective.... so perhaps more reading of it will cure me of my limitations.

Cendrars loved this book. He conceived of it while talking to a diminutive Jew in a bar on the Boul' Mich' in 1912 -- The Jew's name was Starckmann. Moravigine then accompanied him, Cendrars, throughout his many travails for the next 10 years or more. The Jew admired Cendrars enormously; he was devoted. And when Cendrars joined the War, the Jew followed him. Cendrars lost his right arm. The Jew lost his life.

Cendrars seems to have been a man of excesses -- and yet capable of guilt. He knew everyone, but in his autobiography spoke mainly about all the nobodies he knew. In his "found documents", printed at the rear of this volume, he speaks about his deep friendship for Satie..., "dear Satie...." Here's how he sounds when he's not being turgid and pretentious....:

"Moravagine. I've tried several times to go back to it since giving it up in Nice. Today, if it's back on the table, it's because Cocteau set things in motion again - that's what I hear. Cocteau brings it up with Edmond Jaloux; Jaloux, who edits a collection of novels, mentions it to his publisher; he writes to me. I don't want to know about it. I don't know Jean Cocteau and I don't want to hear about Jaloux. So I'm hunted down -- by Paul Laffitte, by young people who come to my house to discuss the standards of high literature. (What a joke, they've never written a thing! maybe never a read a thing! but they're charming, well-dressed, likable; you'd think they were Cocteau's young nephews! and Jean, sprung from the loins of Catulle Mendès, is himself a great-nephew of Proust's!) Finally the publisher sends his delegate, Brun, the director of the house. Louis Brun, former surveillance photographer, delivers his pitch. He goes about it informally. He's on the level and above board in his business dealings, he says. He asks my price. I ask for a fat sum. He knocks it down by a fifth. We sign. He calls me 'tu'. We part good friends. We're thick as thieves...."

Ahh.... He must have been quite a character and a charming rogue, Cendrars. And I can see how Miller must have loved him and stole so much from him.... Definitely, 4 stars!

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1907, the young Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars was in a workers’ restaurant on the outskirts of Bern when he came across a strange character hunched over a plate of roast potatoes. The man had no money and nowhere to stay; Cendrars gave him some bread and took him in for the night. He had just come out of prison after serving a long sentence for assaulting two young girls, and was full of shame.

After the man left, Cendrars could not get him out of his head. He morphed into the figure of ‘Moravagine, idiot’ – part monster, part embodiment of modernity – whose life story and thought processes Cendrars became obsessed with recreating. For years, as Cendrars travelled about the world, in the French Foreign Legion and in the trenches of the First World War, this figure took hold of his mind in a way that was almost a kind of possession. ‘He was there, settled into me like an armchair,’ Cendrars said. ‘I raised a parasite at my own expense.’

The book by which Cendrars finally rid himself of this parasite in 1926 is a baffling confection: wildly inventive, horribly misogynistic, linguistically exuberant, self-referential, surrealist, picaresque, full of heartfelt cynicism and obscurely channelled impulses. It’s often off-putting and hard to love, it’s a mess in terms of its structure, but the strength of feeling on the page is sometimes so striking that you’re enraptured despite yourself.

The novel’s narrator is a medical student at a Swiss insane asylum, where he comes across Moravagine in a special enclosure. The last descendant of a Hungarian royal lineage, the strange inmate is a crippled lunatic who was locked up after eviscerating his fiancée. Our narrator (who nurses his own grudge against the psychiatric establishment) breaks him out, and the two proceed to rampage around the world in a fairground-mirror reflection of a novel of adventures.

Moravagine – whose name sounds ominously like ‘death to vagina’ in French – represents, perhaps, all the suppressed desires and ‘locked up’ impulses of prewar Europe, and his escape from the asylum is seen as a kind of explosion into modernity, with its machinery, its speed, and its violence. The book’s misogyny is elevated to the status of a guiding philosophy. At heart, as Cendrars understands, it’s really a kind of frightened gynophobia:

La femme est sous le signe de la lune, ce reflet, cet astre mort, et c’est pourquoi plus la femme enfante, plus elle engendre la mort. Plutôt que de la génération, la mère est le symbole de la destruction, et quelle est celle qui ne préférerait tuer et dévorer ses enfants, si elle était sûre par là de s’attacher le mâle, de le garder, de s’en compénétrer, de l’absorber par en bas, de le digérer, de le faire macérer en elle, réduit à l’état de fœtus et de le porter ainsi toute sa vie dans son sein? Car c’est à ça qu’aboutit cette immense machinerie de l’amour, à l’absorption, à la résorption du mâle.

Woman is under the sign of the moon – that reflection, that dead star – which is why the more woman gives birth, the more she engenders death. The mother is the symbol of destruction rather than generation; who among them would not rather kill and eat her children, if she was sure thereby to attach herself to the male, to keep hold of him, enter into him, absorb him from beneath, digest him, keep him chewed up inside her, reduced to the state of a foetus and carried for the rest of her life inside her breast? For that is where this whole immense machinery of love leads: to absorption, the reabsorption of the male.

This strain in the novel, which seems to reflect Cendrars’s own dubious concerns, is uncomfortable to read but paradoxically also provides some of the book’s most authentic power. It sits uneasily with Moravagine’s exploration of modernity and means that the book never feels entirely successful – there’s always something awkward about it, like two or three novels are wrestling together under the same trenchcoat.

When Cendrars’s writing takes flight, however, it can be dazzling. His prose moves between medical case notes, lyrical flights of fancy, exhaustive lists and bursts of cynical philosophising, and his vocabulary is huge and inspiring. (‘Dictionaries take up a lot of space,’ he later said, ‘but I can’t live without my Petit Larousse.’) He is exhilarated by the trappings of the modern world, and scans the city like an obscure piece of text where he can read its

écriture démotique, animée du cinéma qui s’adresse à la foule impatiente des illettrés, les journaux qui ignorent la grammaire et la syntaxe pour mieux frapper l’œil avec les placards typographiques des annonces, les prix pleins de sensibilité sous une cravate dans une vitrine, les affiches multicolores et les lettres gigantesques qui étaient les architectures hybrides des villes et qui enjambent les rues, les nouvelles constellations électriques qui montent chaque soir au ciel, l’abécédaire des fumées dans le vent du matin.

demotic writing, animated by the cinema which addresses itself to the impatient crowd of illiterates, the newspapers which ignore grammar and syntax the better to catch the eye with typographic news placards, the prices full of sensitivity under a tie in a window, the multicoloured posters and gigantic letters which are the hybrid architecture of the cities and which straddle the streets, the new electric constellations which appear in the sky every evening, the abecedarium of fumes in the morning wind.

One character, who like the author is a rambling citizen of the world, is introduced thus:

Il connaissait les maisons par leur numéro, les montagnes par leur altitude, les enfants par leur date de naissance, les bateaux par leur nom, les femmes par leurs amants, les hommes par leurs défauts, les animaux par leurs qualités, les plantes par leurs vertus, les étoiles par leur influence.

He knew houses by their number, mountains by their altitude, children by their date of birth, boats by their name, women by their lovers, men by their flaws, animals by their qualities, plants by their virtues, stars by their influence.

Taken together, the book is a work that invites fascination rather than love. I was reminded at various times of Sade, Jung, Marinetti, JG Ballard, and a host of other disparate writers in varied fields; it’s particularly interesting to consider it alongside the other experimental writing appearing in Europe in the 1920s, discussions of which rarely include Cendrars.

It’s not a work that endeared me to its author, but it is one that made me want to read more from, and about, him, and one whose strange energy got under my skin. Au commencement était le rythme et le rythme s’est fait chair, Cendrars wrote, offering one possible way to think about his horrible antihero: In the beginning was the rhythm, and the rhythm was made flesh.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Courageous absurdity. Audacious luster. Unequivocal bloodlust. Dragging existentialism across the muddied battlefields at the heart of man’s inextinguishable conflagration, this book bestows the chattering of the primal inescapably intertwined with the human spirit. Nihilism rants from the gutters of humanity speaking that inexcusable, uncomfortable & unapologetic truth. The mirror reflects a monstrosity but what else was there to view but man devouring its own flesh, shitting out ideals only to fertilize the destruction that lay ravaged heaping with steaming germination. Yes they rebuilt the milieu but with raw & inconsolable exteriors. Blood barely drying. This book unveils the animosity that harkens from our core as if the duality dominated our path of discovery. Cendrars is almost a victim. Moravagine is almost a hero. The reader is most assuredly an accomplice. The story begs the question, what is at the very base of man. The traveling of the two characters makes for great conflict. The adventures introduce many eccentric characters. His descriptive style generates energy. He invites you into the madness as an accomplice or as a hostage, you are not sure whether to have fun or fear for your life. This book seems like it is meant for heathens & perhaps this is why I enjoy it so much. Certain halves of man irreconcilable. Cendrars writes as if he is if to suffocate the reader in madness, the reader becomes a sadomasochist in the process, torturing the reader with its suppression of oxygen, almost on the point of death, until he releases your submerged head & finally allows you to breathe & oh the air is so sweet when escaping from such a dreary womb. The tale has extreme contours, wild & unforeseen twists of tone & plot. The variety is quite pleasing & puts on full display the author’s flexibility & diverse tastes. There is mention of the Idiot, but what of the devil, the butcher, the mystic, the subversive, the baron, the lecher, the committed. The endless sides to the psyche of Moravagine make him an extraordinary character. The contrast between the two main characters only adds to the robust flavor of this recalling. This exotic flower singed by the bomb & sullied by the whore’s lipstick impaled by the sounds of political nonsense. It pushes wisdom deep into the nether regions of your mind like a lobotomy incision. Compels you to leave your comfort to venture into the very pulse of a supreme virility. A potency exists, exclaims & wails with fright & sheer bliss. The psychotic cackle of someone truly free from societies’ boundaries, from law, from conscience from judgment by god, beast or man truly resonates. A freedom that extinguishes itself with a fury. It brings to mind what society found vulgar then & what is found vulgar now, what is deemed obscene. It's an aborted fetus sprinkled with glitter. Indeed whimsical carnage bedazzled with the jewels of elegant words. A diamond covered in shit. The book is littered with amazing quotes & insight. I especially appreciated reading about his hardships in writing & finalizing the book. It makes me feel less guilty about my hardships in the same manner. The combination of all of this made it a very enjoyable read for me. Cheers to the mad!

[Hank1972 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buona la prima [lettura 2025]

Moravagine entra di diritto nella lista dei miei personaggi letterari da ricordare.

E’ libero, refrattario ad ogni religione, convenzione, ideologia o potere costituito. Incluso quello sessuale e procreatrice della donna. E’ profondo e geniale. E’ l’idiota di Dostojevski, puro come il principe Myskin e, allo stesso tempo, capace del male estremo come Rogožin. E’ enigmatico, come colui che indossava la Maschera di Ferro. Per il canone sociale, é pazzo.

Seguiamo le sue vicende, dai nobili natali nell’impero austro-ungarico, all’internamento in un manicomio svizzero, alle avventure in giro per l’Europa, la Russia che si avvia alla rivoluzione, il sud-ovest degli Stati Uniti, il selvaggio Sud America, assieme all’amico, dottor Raymond.

Un esplosione di vitalità attraversando paesi, storie e la grande storia. Un amicizia profonda. Un protagonista a cui, nonostante tutto, ci si affeziona, perchè è un po’ come noi, fragile e imperfetto perso nel caos del mondo.

"Santo cielo, hai ancora voglia di riflettere, hai sempre avuto questa necessità di riflettere su tutto, di guardare e di vedere, di prendere misure, impronte, appunti che non sai come ordinare. Lascia queste cose agli archivisti della polizia. Insomma, non hai ancora capito che il mondo del pensiero è un’anticaglia, e che la filosofìa è peggio della schedatura dei criminali? Mi fate ridere, con la vostra angoscia metafisica, è che avete strizza, paura della vita, paura degli uomini d’azione, dell’azione, del disordine. Ma tutto quanto è solo disordine, amico mio. Disordine i vegetali, i minerali e le bestie; disordine la moltitudine delle razze umane; disordine la vita degli uomini, il pensiero, la storia, le battaglie, le invenzioni, il commercio, le arti; disordine le teorie, le passioni, i sistemi. È sempre stato così. Perché volete mettere ordine? Quale ordine? Che cosa cercate? Non esiste verità. Esiste solo l’azione, l’azione che obbedisce a un milione di moventi diversi, l’azione effimera, l’azione che subisce tutte le congiunture possibili e immaginabili, l’azione antagonista. La vita. La vita è delitto, furto, gelosia, fame, menzogna, sborra, stupidità, malattie, eruzioni vulcaniche, terremoti, mucchi di cadaveri. Tu non puoi farci niente, povero amico mio; non vorrai metterti a sfornare libri, vero?"

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

You are lovely as a stovepipe, smooth and rounded into yourself, elbowed. Your body is like an egg on the seashore. You are concentrated as rock salt and transparent as rock crystal. You are a prodigous blossoming, a motionless whirlpool. The abyss of light. You are like a sounding line that sinks to incalculable depths. You are like a blade of grass magnified a thousand times.

The words of a madman who, deprived of the object of his desire, becomes so obsessed with mundane objects that these are the only terms left to him when at last he sees her again. The words of our protagonist, Moravagine, anarchist and murderer, whose name translates as either "death by vagina" or "death to vagina", and whose madness and objectifications are only beginning. A uniquely French embodiment of the prevailing madness of his era, monstrous and magnetic, Moravagine seems to be the spawn of Mirbeau, Fantomas, and dada, and a contemporary of Celine. His story, recounted by the doctor who frees him from a ward for the criminally insane in order to better observe him, is a kind of travelogue owing its energetically erratic prose equally to adventure yarns, surrealist fantasia, and pitch-dripping nihilism. The bilious philosophy bubbling forth from the latter can be somewhat problematic in its over-generalization and sexism, but that may be partly because it can be difficult to extract Cendrars' actual views from those of his protagonists. And, as with Celine, whatever my reservations, when he's spot on, he's absolutely spot on:

Is there a more monstrous thought, a more convincing spectacle, a more patent affirmation of the impotence and madness of the brain? War. All our philosophies, religions, arts, techniques and trades lead to nothing but this. The finest flowers of civilization. The purest constructions of thought. The most generous and altruistic passions of the heart. The most heroic gestures of man. War. Now and a thousand years ago. Tomorrow and a hundred thousand years ago. No it's not a question of your country, by German or French friend, or yours, whether you're black or white or Papuan or a Borneo monkey. It's a question of your life. If you want to live, kill. Kill so you can be free, or eat, or shit. The shameful thing is to kill in masses, at a predetermined hour, on a predetermined day, in honor of certain principles, under cover of a flag, with old men nodding approval, to kill in a disinterested or passive fashion. Stand alone against them all young man, kill, kill, you are unique, you are the only man alive, kill until the others cut you short with the guillotine or the cord or the rope, with or without ceremony, in the name of the Community or the King.

[knig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moravagine is one huge masturbatory celebration, Cendrars’ personal exorcism into born-again apogee.

I think Cendrars woke up one morning and he decided he’d had enough of dichotomy, duality and double structure. With one fell swoop of the literary sword, he cut himself in two, separating out the unacceptable face of humanity like so much egg white oozing away from the yolk, and infested invested Moragavine rankest of them all, thus allowing himself to phoenix whole, purged and as pure as a pair of newborn baby’s buttocks.

This is a roman a clef. Raymond, a young psychoanalyst, rescues the abominable (in thought, and word, and deed, and indeed, physique) Moragavine from an insane asylum, and the two of them go on a world wide rampage of anarchy and murder: well Moragavine does, with Raymond mostly a spectator.

Their travels follow Cendrars’ personal life travails: Russia, The United States and finally Paris. In a clever twist towards the end, Raymond encounters Cendrars who has lost an arm in WWI and asks him to write up Moragavine’s manuscripts. I like it when authors pop up in their books for a tete a tete with their characters. Oh, and Cendrars did lose his right arm in the Great War.

Moragavine, then, is Raymond aka Cendrars doppelganger: that ugly, nasty, evil, unPC part of ourselves we always have to keep in check, subdue, cut off at the collar. Except Cendrars doesn’t do that: instead, he vests it all in Moragavine, and lets him rip, whilst following behind, and sucking it all in vicariously. Moragavine means ‘death by vagina’. Full throttle misogyny in hand, he disembowels women and children, embraces murder, anarchy and debauchery, feels empowered when he kills, laughs when the world cries, has no remorse but tons of energy for yet new and new escapade. Trailing behind is Raymond: a sexless, ennui-ed, eunuch-ed, disenchanted half shadow of Moragavine, enthralled and possessed by him.

Because Cendrars ultimately sees life as boring and empty once all the sin and strife has been stripped out. It doesn't ay to be 'too good'. Just as all sin and no Grace is equally unrewarding. Neither character is whole. Maybe we are meant to have a little of both.

[Andrew]

Blaise Cendrars is one of those writers who should, by any stretch of the imagination, be more widely read on American shores. His particular brand of wackiness is something that -- while as Frenchy as a baguette wearing a beret -- is something that would resonate with any fan of Burroughs, Pynchon, Hunter Thompson, or any of those other dudes I worshipped as a teenager. And how did the dorks who were into steampunk in the '00s not get down with his brand of pennyfarthing antics and sentences that read like Decemberists lyrics thrown in a blender? Or, for that matter, any fan of Wes Anderson? Maybe it has something to do with the way that only the greatest hits get translated, and only the greatest of greatest hits meaningfully enter the mainstream literary discourse. Maybe it has something to do with the way in which "surrealism" is appreciated more in concept than in actuality (sure, plenty of people like a Dali painting they can glance at, but how many are willing to sit down with Andre Breton?). No matter the case you should read Moravagine. It's great fun.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dark, comic journey through the early 20th century and across Europe and the Americas that is part Verne and part Celine (except this ends instead of starts with World War One). The main characters are pretty horrible and disturbing and their adventures range from whimsical to pretty dark as they encounter a scary version of Russia during the 1905 revolt, trouble with Indians in America, hanging out with a monkey on an ocean liner, and finally a strangely heartbreaking ending in the aftermath of the world war. A travelogue, nihilist philosophy, black farce, and historical novel. Quite unlike much of anything else.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seemed to me to be the right (if not logical) next book after just completing Fear: A Novel of World War I. Take the horrors of war and paint them allegorically in the form of a human monster. I was promised it would be "At once appalling and appallingly funny..." I found it neither, and as Sgt. Hulka once said, "I got a helluva sense of humor."

There are plenty of positive to gushing reviews, so don't go by me.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exceedingly wobblily constructed macabre picaresque novel, intermittently rip-roaring and wearisome.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book! Moments that are as ferocious and incandescent as any I've read. Framed as an elaborate literary hoax - the overlong preface to The Complete Works of Moravagine - which are, zut alors(!), lost. Stolen from their resting place in a French country cottage ... beside a steeple ... where they were kept ... in an attic ... under lock and key. Pilfered by Nazis, ground into the muck by hobnailed boots. Thankfully this slender tome was rescued (conniving wink, sharp-elbowed nudge). Here's a passage that captures the delirium:

"All is palpitating. My prison disappears. The walls are struck down, there is a beating of wings. Life lifts me into the air like a gigantic vulture. At this height the earth is rounded like a breast. One can see through it's transparent crust the veins of the core with their scudding, red pulsations. On another side the rivers run, blue like arterial blood, and in the billions upon billions of creatures are hatching. Above, like dusky lungs, the oceans swell and fall in turn. The two glaciers eyes are close together and roll slowly in their sockets. Now see the double sphere of a forehead, the sudden crest of a nose, its flinty ledges, its steep walls. I fly across Mont Dore, hoarier than the head of Charlemagne, and land on the rim of the ear which yawns like a lunar crater. This is my eyrie. My hunting ground"

In these moments, it comes across as a treatise, or a sui generis example, of synaesthesia, an unfolding and infolding of sense experience , example of the brains aptitude for to transmuting base materials into viciously hard gems,the arational absorption of phenomena reverse engineering stars from heaps of dung. The paratextual quote by Remy De Gourmont speaks to this - " ... this nothing, contains everything ..." Universe in a grain of sand.

At other moments it's a bare-knuckle & rusty-shiv critique of "modern" culture:

"The finest flowers of civilization. The purest constructions of thought. The most generous and altruistic passions of the heart. The most heroic gestures of man. War. Now and a thousand years ago. [...:] If you want to live, kill. Kill so that you can be free, or eat, or shit. The shameful thing is to kill in masses, at a predetermined hour on a predetermined day, in honour of certain principles, under cover of a flag, with old men nodding approval, to kill in a disinterested or passive way. stand alone against them all, young man, kill, kill, you are unique, you're the only man alive, kill until the others cut you short with the guillotine or the cord or the rope, with or without ceremony, in the name of the Community or the King."

Full stop.

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine being promised a thrilling date. Hints are dropped, oblique references are made, perhaps you’ve even been told what attire should be worn, and then instead of a trip in the First class dining car of the Orient Express you are given a cheese and pickle sandwich, a flask of weak lemon drink and taken to the train station nearest Leyton Orient for a day of train spotting. That mismatch between expectation and experience is my time with this book.

The blurb promised a road trip taken by a murderer and the doctor who released him from the lunatic asylum that had housed him for years. The doctor wants to study a psychopath in the wild, as it were, and so they spend the book travelling around Europe, moving on from each city when in danger of being detected. They get embroiled in all the major events of the early 20th Century, from Russia to the USA and back to the Europe of WWI – the ending of their journey sums up the ham fisted point of the book, namely we can look at Moravagine as an evil, murderous madman but the war has made that of many. Maybe this comparison was more revelatory at the time of writing than it comes across today.

Ultimately, the book read a bit too much like a history lesson and while I like a history book now and again I’d like to have chosen to read it rather than being hoodwinked into it. The other thing that made me take against the book is my irrational hatred of books where the author uses him/her self as a character using their own name, which Blaise Cendrars does in this. The only solace in having read it is that the “complete works of Moravagine” that this book was intended to be only the preface to never materialised which is the equivalent of being on Leyton platform and finding out the trains end at midday.

[Eternauta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Αμετανόητος τυχοδιώκτης, εραστής της στιγμής, μερακλής, εκ πεποιθήσεως λιποτάκτης από κάθε λογής συμβιβασμούς. Ο Blaise Cendrars βουτά την πένα του στο ρούμι και μας μεθάει...σύντροφος πιστός από την εφηβεία μου, με κάθε ανάγνωση με συμβουλεύει και με χτυπά στην πλάτη. Σπάνια περίπτωση!

[Hux · Rating 3 out of 5]

On paper I ought to have loved this. But for some reason, I just didn't care about any of it. I think this might be partly due to the fact that I've read three very similar books recently, with similar styles, themes, and characters. Interestingly, all three of these books (this, A Posthumous Confession by Emants, and Fog by de Unamuno) featured a chapter where the author inserted himself into the story as a character (which gives you a clue as to the kind of book you're reading). Additionally, I'm not entirely sure I'm a fan of picaresque novels that substitute any semblance of realism in favour of melodramatic adventure. But mostly I think it was a slight case of fatigue. I've read too many of these types of books recently and in quick succession.

This one starts with a psychiatrist (our narrator) working in a prison for the criminally insane. Here, he meets the titular character Moravagine, a nobleman with a history sexual violence and murder. At first glance, this appears to be the foundation of the book (and why I thought it might be fun) but as it goes along the narrative kind of leaves that salacious stuff behind (as a motivating theme at least) and instead turns into a travelogue and philosophical treatise. The narrator (Raymond) helps Moravagine escape and together they go on a global adventure, starting in Russia, back through Europe and England, across the Atlantic (this was one of the few chapters I enjoyed because it involved an Orangutan), around America, into South America, and back to Paris just in time for the invention of the aeroplane and the start of the First World War. As I was reading all this globe trotting stuff, I definitely felt a strong sense of Celine's Journey to The End of the Night and I can't imagine he wasn't partially influenced by this. Likewise, I suspect A Posthumous Confession by Emants (confessing to outlandish behaviours, social ineptitude, and general unpleasantness ) was, in turn, probably an influence on this. But I thought Emants writing was frankly more impressive. 

Anyway, this book is part derring-do adventure, part psychological exploration of madness, part misogynistic rant. The introduction to my copy does make a point of reminding the reader that Mort a vagine = death by vagina / death to vagina could be interpreted to mean birth inevitably leads to death or more specifically be a reference to his hatred for women. I don't know but it's not really that important because as I said at the start... I just didn't care for any of this. It was fine, it was plodding, a dark comedy that seemed to want to be more but which never quite got there. I wasn't bored but I wasn't enthralled either. I would definitely recommend it as a fun romp, a distraction, but, in truth, it never really excited me at any point, my experience of reading the book a somewhat meandering and uninspired event.  

Worth a look with some intriguing transgressive qualities but a little too goofy for my tastes. 

[Amorfna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Za početak, imam problem – ne znam odakle krenuti i kako sve upakovati.

Moravagine je bizarna, surealna, road trip na steroidima Pandorina kutija književnosti. Priča o Moravagineu ( smrt vagini i smrt od vagine,srž glavnog lika sažeta u sopstvenom imenu) , psihopati, ličnosti koja je spoj svih vaših strahova, i njegovom psihijatru ( na neki način)koji mu u jednom trenutku, fasciniran njime, pomaže da pobegne iz mentalne ustanove u kojoj je smešten te zajedno kreću u pokor sveta. To bi bilo to ukratko. Zar Vam treba više?

Počeću od jedine kritike koje imam na ovu knjigu – i u pitanju je vrlo subjektivan stav naravno.
Volela bih da je knjiga konzistentnija te da je autor održao atmosferu romana na istom nivou od početka do kraja.
Prvih 60ak strana knjige ( sve do dolaska u Moskvu) kao i poglavlje Plavi indijanci su najblaže rečeno remek delo, kako literarno, kako stilski pa usudiću se reći i vizuelno – iako nije sasvim ispravno.
U ovim delovima,knjiga zahteva sporo i pažljivo čitanje. Ne zbog svoje težine već iz jednog prostog razloga – svako brzanje je vaš gubitak.
Turobna atmosfera moralne praznine, nehajnost dekadencije i ubistva, mirisi i opora zagušljiva slatkoća bolesti i smrti u dolini Orinoka, izvitopereni tok Moravagineovih deluzionih misli u zatvoru ( ovo mi je lično najdraži deo...stopiti se vizuelno sa njegovim mislima je uzbudljivo, koliko lepo toliko i strašno iskustvo).
Jedna misao koja me je poprilično zabavljala tokom čitanja nekih delova knjige ( a posebice Plavih indijanaca) jeste da ako je ikada , u književnom smislu, Žil Vern imao sadistički nastrojenog mračnog brata blizanca , to mora da je bio Sandrar! A ta misao, osim što me je zabavila, podsetila me je koliko volim Verna i kako bih trebala da mu se vratim ponekad.

A sada dolazimo do problema. U odnosu na ova dva dela-ostatak knjige je u senci.
Nakon dolaska u Moskvu, knjiga prosto nije dovoljno mračna i devijantna za moj ukus, ne ispunjava očekivanja. Manifest ludila i sadizma kao sila koja kreiraju naš svet,pretvara se u jednu ludu, brzu, potpuno over the top avanturu ( sa ponovnom reanimacijom u Plavim indijancima) što nije loše i zabavno je ali nije na nivou ostatka i pomalo je pretenciozno. Nije mi legla Moskva , nije mi legla revolucija, a još manje I svetski rat ,zaista nije.

Ovo nije knjiga za svakoga, nikako. I šteta je što je ,u odnosu na neka manje vredna dela, potpuno zanemarena.
Uprkos mojoj kritici – preporuka – sve i da čitate samo ova dva poglavlja, isplati se !

[Il Pech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinossi striminzita no perditempo:
Moravagine è un Forrest Gump sozzo e abietto, che gira il mondo trasciandoci con lui in un tour de force di perversioni alla facciaccia dei borghesucci benpensanti.

Da buon francese di inizio '900, Cendrars ha preso il mood maledetto dei suoi compatrioti Baudelaire e Lautreamont e l' ha mixato col leit motiv della sua generazione, il movimento anarchico, farcendo il tutto con un catalogo di devianze e aberrazioni.
La voglia di stupire e schifare sono accompagnate da una scrittura elegante e a tratti iperfarcita, le frasi strutturate e debordanti denotano un lavoro certosino di revisione da parte dell'autore
ma
questo è il classico caso in cui il problema sono io.
Saranno la freddezza e il distacco emotivo della sua scrittura, sarà lo sfilacciamento del plot in cui i capitoli si susseguono come avventure a sé stanti senza un fil rouge che leghi il tutto, sarà il calo di ritmo nella parte finale, sarà che da quando Totti e Ilary si sono lasciati non riesco piu ad emozionarmi, ma Moravagine si ferma a quattro solidissime stelle invece di rivelarsi quel capolavoro di stile e insurrezione che dopo le prime pagine mi aspettavo di trovare.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant sections throughout, though plenty of longueurs as well. Glad I read it, even though it's not the anti-literary barnburner that I was expecting.
3.5 stars

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has made a strong impression on me. At first I thought it was going to be another French surrealist black fantasy, like Maldoror or The Torture Garden or Story of the Eye. And partly this is true: it's an episodic account of a madman called Moravagine (his name is an indication of his misogynistic purpose in life) released from an insane asylum by the doctor who is treating him, as part of a bizarre and unorthodox experiment.

The amoral pair travel around the world getting into various scrapes. They are caught up in the Russian revolution, go prospecting for gold in the Arizona desert, escape on a ship and travel up the Orinoco, where Moravagine becomes a living god to a tribe of lost blue Indians. Then they return to France and Moravagine becomes a pilot before the outbreak of the First World War.

What makes this odd novel special is the quality of the writing. The descriptions of the fetid jungles of South America are remarkable and although the two main characters are rather despicable they are also fascinating. There's a pleasantly jarring effect near the end when the author, Blaise Cendrars, enters the novel. A nice metafictional touch, handled well.

Certainly I will now seek out other novels by Cendrars. Probably To the End of the World first, as my local library actually has that one in stock!

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfect "I'd rather talk about it than read it" book, which brings home to me once and for all how impossible it is to remain 'shocking' as history pro/regresses--like Celine, in that respect. And once the shockingness is gone, there's not a whole lot left to keep this thing together, unfortunately.

It does have, however, the greatest title in literature, and really, really does make a great conversation topic. We have our 'hero,' Moravagine, and his Robin, 'Dr. Science.' Voila: the two main twentieth century paths to amorality, the nihilistic and the scientistic. They travel the globe doing moderately shocking things. Moravagine causes the first Russian Revolution. He's a daring fighter pilot. He disembowels women.

More interesting by far is the apparatus Cendrars sets up around the picaresque: Moravagine's 'manuscripts,' the very hazy relationship between Blaise Cendrars and Dr. Science, Cendrars' reflections on writing the book. And some of the chapters are worth reading. "Our Rambles in America" is a kind of inverted "Education of Henry Adams," and the closing chapters (they take place after the world has, by creating the first world war, out moravagined Moravagine) are oddly moving.

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul le Farge points out in his learned introduction to the nyrb edition of this tremendous novel that, as Blaise Cendrars is the alter ego of the author, Federic Sauser, so is Moravagine Blaise Cendrars' alter ego. Moravagine, perhaps the sole authentic descendant of the last King of Hungary, perhaps merely a hallucination is "a dark little man skinny, knotted and desiccated as a vine-stock, seemingly burned by the flame that flickers in the depths of his great eyes. His forehead is low. His eye-sockets deep. The circles beneath his eyes almost touch the creases about his mouth. His right leg, the knee afflicted with anchylosis, forms a right angle and he limps terribly. His hands dangle at the ends of arms as long as a monkey's"

In this unprepossessing figure, first seen masturbating into a goldfish bowl, our narrator sees "the superb creature who was to lead me to a grandstand seat at a tremendous spectacle of revolution and transformation, the transvaluation of all social values and of life itself" and so he assists the superb creature from a psychiatric asylum (operated by Doctor Stein who lives "exclusively on curds of milk, steamed rice and buttered bananas...the initiator of the health-dress and hygienic camel-hair underwear"). Under orders from the sensationally effective and mysterious organisation of which they are members, the two swing across Russia, Europe and South America murdering and terrorising in the name of revolution.

"Here, then, are the new elements that were to pulverize the Empire.

The powerful explosive and the choking gas into which A.A.A. had poured all his will for destruction. The infernal machine, the subtly triggered bombs into which Z.Z. had put all his longing and desire for suicide. The meticulous preparation of the assassination, the place, the chosen date, the designation of our accomplices, the assignment of roles, our training programme, the necessary stimulants, the armament - into which Ro-Ro (our leader, Ropschin) had put all his will for power, all his love of risk, his energy, his tenacity, his mad temerity, his audacity, his decisiveness. We were trimmed for action and could not have reversed the process if we had wanted to."

Cendrars is a luminous, entrancing writer, the story is horrifically fascinating, and the prose dense and sublime. Moravagine is fifteen and in love -

"Everything around me became a voice, an articulation, an incantation, a tumescence. I could see the swaying of the tree-tops: the foliage of the park opened and closed, borrowing the gestures of voluptuous forms; the sky was tense and arched like a rump. I became extraordinarily sensitive. Everything was music to me. An orgy of colour. Vigour. Health. I was happy. Happy. I was aware of the profound life and ticklish root of the senses. I threw out my chest. I felt myself strong, all-powerful. I was jealous of all nature. Everything should give in to my desires, obey my whims, bend before the wind of my breath. I commanded trees to fly, flowers to rise in the air, I ordered the meadows and the house foundations to run, to about-face. Rivers, flow back to your source: let all things fly to the west to feed the furnace of the sky against which Rita soars like a pillar of perfume."

Unfortunately for Rita, "Woman is malignant. The history of all civilization shows us the devices put to work by men to defend themselves against flabbiness and effeminacy. Arts, religions, doctrines, laws and immortality itself are nothing but weapons invented by men to resist the universal prestige of women. Alas, these vain attempts are and always will be without the slightest effect, for woman triumphs over all abstractions". Women are "all-powerful", "masochistic", "malignant" and "engender death". So the intrepid couple do their best to cleanse the world of women, one at a time. Or at least Moravagine does the dirty work at which his companion never ceases to be amazed and amused.

The closest this book comes to humour is when part of the organisation's plan necessitates travelling by rail, each in a barrel of sauerkraut:-

"Loading and unloading can be very inconvenient for one anyone travelling in a barrel, for then he gets rolled, jarred and ricocheted and risks spending the rest of the voyage on his head. But all this has been thought of. Our barrels are carefully padded on the inside and an especially thick layer gives extra protection to the head and shoulders. The barrels are very spacious, you can live in them in relative comfort. They can be shut from the inside by a lever which is within reach of the hand. This system allows for ventilation on the way; the lever only pulled to during stops or trans-shipping. When the lever is locked the barrel is hermetically closed. At such times the traveller has two little rubber tubes at his disposal Through one of them he draws air from outside, through the other he breathes out air that has been used. It's important not to make a mistake, and it's rather awkward making use of these tubes, for as one is half-smothered by the fumes of the sauerkraut the tendency is to breathe normally. Above all one must keep one's mouth closed and breathe as slowly and regularly as possible. From the lever handle is suspended a little sack containing discs of pemmican, chocolate bars, a bottle of crème de menthe, a phial of ether and some sugar lumps."

And there is worse to be found than some rather soiled sauerkraut when the train reaches its destination. You have been warned.

Moravagine, the man and the novel, are fabulous, disgusting, verbose, audacious and absolutely nuts.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story starts out so promising. We meet Moravagine in a mental institute, all of 4'11", monstrous, born of a dead womb, and jacking off into a fish bowl. He's gruesome, yet somehow likable despite his misogyny, sexual assaults, murders, and impregnation of one woman that leads to her suicide.

I was fine with all of that.
What bothered me was the pacing. The story gets far too plot-driven and I found myself wishing that the main characters would just stay put instead of bouncing around the far corners of the earth. The ending takes a welcome postmodern turn...While Moravagine as a character may prove to be quite memorable, for me, the adventures certainly are not.

[Theo Austin-Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes you read a book that clearly has a little of everyone you’ve ever read before. This work easily brushes shoulders with the likes of Miller, Gide, Angela Carter, Bataille and James Hogg. Another great transgressive travel novel.