Anyway, came in the other day, and immediately got the attention of everyone in the office. Wakefield Press is one of our favorites, mostly for the very strange, almost unclassifiable books that they do. This one is no exception:

Billed by its author糖心传媒攖he pseudonymous Mynona (German for 糖心传媒渁nonymous糖心传媒� backward)糖心传媒攁s 糖心传媒渢he most profound magical experiment since Nostradamus,糖心传媒� The Creator tells the tale of Gumprecht Weiss, an intellectual who has withdrawn from a life of libertinage to pursue his solitary philosophical ruminations. At first dreaming and then actually encountering an enticing young woman named Elvira, Weiss discovers that she has escaped the clutches of her uncle, the Baron, who has been using her as a guinea pig in his metaphysical experiments. But the Baron catches up with them and persuades Gumprecht and Elvira to come to his laboratory, to engage in an experiment to bridge the divide between waking consciousness and dream by entering a mirror engineered to bend and blend realities. Mynona糖心传媒檚 philosophical fable was described by the legendary German publisher Kurt Wolff as 糖心传媒渁 station farther on the imaginative train of thought of Hoffmann, Villiers, Poe, etc.,糖心传媒� when it appeared in 1920, with illustrations by Alfred Kubin (included here).

The “most profound magical experiment since Nostradamus” is what sold it for me. This sounds so wild, and basically perfect for Halloween . . .

This is translated by Peter Wortsman (who has also translated Musil and Kleist for Archipelago Books), and contains the illustrations from Alfred Kubin.