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anomaly

Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials

by Reza Negarestani

Cyclonopedia is theoretical-fiction novel by Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negarestani. Hailed by novelists, philosophers and cinematographers, Negarestani’s work is the first horror and science fiction book coming from and written on the Middle East.

'The Middle East is a sentient entity—it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archaeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ‘lubricant’ of historical and political narratives. A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along. Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil ... At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archaeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

Out of Bounds (forthcoming)

by Dominique Hecq

OUT OF BOUNDS is a sequence of poems in three parts. It is a double story of dislocation that explores autobiographical fragments drawing on the protagonist’s experience of migration and motherhood. It draws together the two strands to reveal a subject at pains to re-define herself through language in a space circumscribed by sexuality, culture, and post-colonial politics. Succinct and astonishingly vivid, these pieces stretch the boundaries of language and literary form.

The Trip

by George Papaellinas

The Trip is the story of Odysseus or Oddy who claims he’s as old as Arfstraya itself. He’s brain-damaged, demented, deluded or just senile. He is an old beer-drinker who has drunk too much grog in his time; he is perpetually down the local pub; indeed, he just about lives there… Or he’s been embittered by all the indignities he’s suffered as a Greek migrant to Arfstraya or he’s telling the truth and he really is one of the Olympian gods, an immortal, a minor deity, a demi- or semi-god who can even remember the dinosaurs… The Trip traverses Australian history, and features some prominent Australian historical personalities on the way.

Black River

by Justin Clemens with artwork by Helen Johnson

Black River is the autobiography of a nonexistent personage. Drawing on literary techniques developed by Beckett, Burroughs and Borges, Black River plunges into a violent and surreal world from which the last traces of the gods have vanished. The reader will encounter such creatures as mouthers, pokers, the sucking lady, white curls, the loved one, the magistrate, and the ambassador, presented in spare, relentless prose. The text by Justin Clemens is supplemented with Helen Johnson's extraordinary collages. Black River is a work of hallucinatory materialism.

Fifty Poems of Attar

by Attar (translated and introduced by Ali Alizadeh and Kenneth Avery)

The great 13th century Sufi poet Farid al-Din Attar is renowned as an author of superb short lyrics written in the Persian language. Dealing with themes of love, passion and mysticism, the versions presented in this book are the first sustained offerings of Attar’s lyric poetry in English. Award-winning Iranian-born poet, Ali Alizadeh, and Persian specialist, Kenneth Avery, have collaborated on this project which aims to bring this remarkably vigorous yet subtle poetry to an English reading audience. The translations are accompanied by the Persian texts themselves, and explanatory notes, and are set in the context of his life and times by an illuminating introductory chapter. An original analysis of Attar’s poetic language and thought is also offered.

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