Book cover of Exquisite Corpse

Book description

Caspar is a mildly promising surrealist painter living in 1930s London, who secretly longs for the ordinary. He meets Caroline who seems ordinary enough until she vanishes. Caspar's obsessive quest to find her leads him into a more surreal landscape than any he could imagine. The dazzling interplay of fiction…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Exquisite Corpse as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The themes of regret and the unstable nature of memory stayed with me long after I had finished the book. A renowned expert on the Arabian Nights, Irwin weaves stories within stories, leaving the reader unsure about what is real and what is the product of a character’s imagination.

The unreliable narrator is a mildly successful but ultimately second-rate twentieth-century British painter who refers to a creative practice employed by the surrealists. The book took me on a wonderful journey through the artistic culture of London. Edith Sitwell, Salvador Dalí, and André Breton are just a few of the famous…

From Marcus' list on fiction about art and artists.

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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