Opium and Other Stories
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
A rediscovered classic of Hungarian literature, this spellbinding collection vividly depicts the darkest impulses of the human psyche against the backdrop of Europe’s moral and social decline on the eve of World War I
Géza Csáth (pen name of Joszef Brenner) was a writer, playwright, musician, psychiatrist, and physician born in Hungary at the end of the 19th century. One of Sigmund Freud’s earliest followers, he pushed both life and art to radical extremes in an all-consuming—and ultimately fatal—search for the unvarnished truth about the human condition.
Written with unsparing clarity and reminiscent of the works of Frank Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe for their dark pessimism and gothic imagination, the short stories collected here pierce the veil of the seemingly tranquil, ordinary lives of their protagonist. At times realistic, at times dreamlike, Csáth’s gruesome, harrowing tales reveal the violent and irrational forces lurking just beneath the surface of a society on the verge of the abyss.
“A memorable volume, Csáth’s depiction of the collapse of Central Europe, by way of magnification of the collapse of the individual, is uncannily prophetic.”—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Republic
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This striking collection from Csáth (1887–1919) introduces readers to the physician, writer, and musician's fertile imagination. In "Matricide," two brothers murder their mother, steal her jewelry, and give it to a sex worker whom they've fallen for. Here and elsewhere, sociopathic human impulses are treated as ordinary. In "Little Emma," a group of children hear about an execution and begin to play hangman until the game turns real: first they kill a dog, then they turn their sights on another child. In addition to animal torture, drugs and their effects are a recurrent theme. "The Surgeon" tells the story of a café patron who meets an alcoholic surgeon who has determined that the perception of time is the source of man's misery, and imagines himself able to enable its cure: "I shall find its seat in the brain. I'll stress the possibility of surgical intervention, its necessity," the patron recalls the surgeon telling him—barring this extraordinary intervention, absinthe will do. Throughout, Csáth demonstrates a thrilling and unnerving commitment to amoral presentations of dark subject matter. Csáth's matter-of-fact depictions of cruelty are sure to alienate some, but others will find them wild and audacious. Regardless of how it lands, this is a fearless work.
