Number 755 on the 2006 edition of 1001 books to read before you die.

Backside text:
The first of Roussel's two major prose works, Impressions of Africa is not, as the title may suggest, a conventional travel account, but an adventure story put together in a highly individual fashion and with an unusual time sequence, whereby the reader is even made to choose wheter to begin with the first or the tenth chapter.
A veritable literary melting pot, Roussel's groundbreaking text makes ample use of wordplay and the surrealist techniques of automatic writing and private allusion.

Tas med på BC-träff!

Och fångad av mig. I catched it in Kalmar.

from Bookdata
"In a mythical African land, some shipwrecked and uniquely talented passengers stage a grand gala to entertain themselves and their captor, the great chieftain Talou. In performance after bizarre performance starring, among others, a zither-playing worm, a marksman who can peel an egg at fifty yards, a railway car that rolls on calves lungs, and fabulous machines that paint, weave, and compose music Raymond Roussel demonstrates why it is that Andre Breton termed him the greatest mesmerizer of modern times. But even more remarkable than the mind-bending events Roussel details as well as their outlandish, touching, or tawdry backstories is the principle behind the novel s genesis, a complex system of puns and double-entendres that anticipated (and helped inspire) such movements as Surrealism and Oulipo. Newly translated and with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti, this edition of Impressions of Africa vividly restores the humor, linguistic legerdemain, and conceptual wonder of Raymond Roussel s magnum opus."

I read it through but find it hard to express with own words. Many complex sentences were too difficult for me. Lucky it was not original in French I caught. Perhaps I send it to Afrika, I saw it on a wishlist from there.

Have a nice time.

The book arrived safely in Cape Town, South Africa.

What a special surprise! A RABCK book from my wishlist arriving in an envelope covered with flower stamps, plus lots of beautiful postcards of Sweden, each with little explanatory notes pencilled in on the back. Just look at the uploaded picture. Christmas in January! Thanks so much, hingrald. The book is lovely and I look forward to reading it.

A strange book. It must have taken a huge effort to write. Dense detail and wordplay — much of which must have got lost in translation, I suspect.

Raymond Roussel clearly had a powerful imagination. To quote Nicholas Jenkins: Roussel appears "to have had no impressions of Africa". What he describes, could have happened (or not happened, to be more precise) anywhere.

The first half consists of a seemingly endless description of exotic scenes and sequences. These are colourful and imaginative but without context. After several chapters I started to lose interest. It has the feeling of music composed by mathematical formula: beautiful if one observes pattern and ingenuity, but difficult to enjoy or even engage with.

In the second half some of the gaps are filled. One is introduced to the characters already encountered in the first half. However, rather than enhancing my appreciation for the work, I found it frustrating to gain this knowledge after the preceding events — yet not so much that I wanted to reread the first half.

Whether out of self-indulgence or simply due to geniality out of touch with real life, the author's hard work may unfortunately have been totally out of proportion with its value to the average reader. Scholars and knowledgeable readers obviously disagree, because the book finds itself ...

On the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die List.

To be released at the OBCZ later today.

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