Other Side - Softcover

Kubin, Alfred

3.75

1,901 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1873982690 ISBN 13: 9781873982693

Publisher: Dedalus Ltd, 2000

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Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was one of the major graphic artists of the 20th century who was widely known for his illustrations of writers of the fantastic such as Balzac, E. I. A. Hoffmann, Gustav Meyrink and Edgar Allan Poe. In his combination of the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque, in his evocations of dream and nightmare, his creation of an atmosphere of mystery and fear he resembles Mervyn Peake.
The Other Side tells of a dream kingdom which becomes a nightmare, of a journey to Pearl, a mysterious city created deep in Asia, which is also a journey to the depths of the subconscious. Or as Kubin himself called it, 'a sort of Baedeker for those lands which are half known to us'.

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Review:

The danger of a purely ideological enterprise is exposed in this unusual novel first published in 1908, and which seems now to be horribly prescient about what the Nazis would perpetrate 30 years later. A dream state is created, where reason doesn t matter, only instinct, and its full horrors are realised. Powerful but highly engaging too. --The Sunday Herald

Expressionist illustrator Kubin wrote this fascinating curio, his only literary work in 1908. A town named Pearl, assembled and presided over by the aptly named Patera, is the setting for his hallucinatory vision of a society founded on instinct over reason. Culminating apocalyptically - plagues of insects, mountains of corpses and orgies in the street - it is worth reading for its dizzying surrealism alone. Though ostensibly a gothic macabre fantasy, it is tempting to read The Other Side as a satire on the reactionary, idealist utopianism evident in German thought in the early twentieth century, highly prescient in its gloom, given later developments. The language often suggests Nietsche. The inevitable collapse of Patera's creation is lent added horror by hindsight. Kubin's depiction of absurd bureaucracy is strongly reminiscent of Kafka's The Trial, and his flawed utopia, situated next to a settlement of supposed savages, brings to mind Huxley's Brave New World; it precedes both novels, and this superb new translation could demonstrate its influence on subsequent modern literature. --Kieron Pim in Time Out

Franz Kafka was one of the many admirers of this grotesque fantasy, which combines symbolist, expressionist and proto-surrealist devices. Mike Mitchell's accomplished translation manages to preserve the alluringly beautiful strangeness of the original and is accompanied by the author's illustrations... Anticipating the challenge to the distinction between dream and reality later propagated more loudly by the Surrealists, Kubin's novel is an important early work of avant-garde art. Inviting psychoanalytical and political readings, it deserves wider recognition, especially in the anglophone world. --Anna Katharina Schaffner in The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author:

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was one of the major graphic artists of the 20th century who was widely known for his illustrations of writers of the fantastic such as Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gustav Meyrink and Edgar Allan Poe, of whom he illustrated at least 50 books. In his combination of the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque, in his evocations of dream and nightmare, his creation of an atmosphere of mystery and fear he resembles Mervyn Peake. The Other Side (1908) is his only work of fiction.

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