Customer Reviews

Other Side (Dedalus European Classics)

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Perhaps I should have said a masterpiece of fantasticism. I believe the author was an artist in the school of the fantastic or fantasmic in the early 20th century. His only work of literature, this book is truly one of the strangest pieces I have ever read. I was initially introduced to it by my college German prof who had a love for this kind of apochryphal lit, and passed on that love to me. I have since read this many, many times. I don't want to give too much away, but the basic story has a young man and his wife invited to live in a newly founded realm in Asia. This realm has been founded by an old school chum, Patera, whose concept is that only things that enhance moods can be permitted into the country, and these things should usually be old and have a kind of emotional evocative power, so to speak. The young couple find themselves in a realm of moods, both depression and manic, and it is a very strange trip, indeed. I recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have a compulsive need for analytical, linear reason in a book!

One senses that this indulgent and dazzling exercise in ferocious derangement and, arguably, allegory, must read less awkwardly in the original German. You will not read this for its literary style, which is clumsy at times, but for its pure, rarefied, winningly repulsive air of pre-War Euro-decadence, for its uncanny presentiments of the coming horrors of the 20th century, and for its profligate richness of bizarre imagery. The book is fuel for dreams of the weirdest kind. This is appropriate, because in it Kubin seeks to portray a "Dream Realm" -- very far from the one Morpheus rules over in The Sandman -- created at the whim of a ludicrously wealthy and myserious aristocrat. This Dream Realm, aka the city of Pearl, is situated in Asia, but represents, among other things, a vision of pre-industrial Europe stagnating, suppurating, and sinking into its indolent self -- but at least avoiding the horrors of modernization and liberalism! With a wink, then (the book is quite funny in a scabrous way), Kubin deals with such issues as race, the media, psychoanalysis, religion (gnosticism in particular), death, and sexuality. He does so inconclusively, but with unflagging inventiveness, and a real eye for the startling mental picture and the horrific detail.

Two aspects make this book worth reading today:
It was written 1908, before the world wars, and
its haunting images were most prophetic.
Secondly, a key idea makes this books both a psycholgical
and surreal experience: The mood of a man and the state of his
soul are mirrored in the physical and social state
of the city he reigns.

Alfred Kubin is better known for his illustrations (of say
E.A. Poe's short stories), and this is his only work of
fiction.

If you want a book where everything becomes clear at the end,
you want something else. If you enjoy being disturbed,
go ahead and read it!

reading this book, I assumed it was a commentary on WW1 and WW2. nope 1908. and that alone makes this book amazing.

the first parts of this book have impressive oblique social satire and are very deep (but a bit melancholy) the last section of this book is pure mayhem with a bugs bunny warner brothers cartoon tone thats completely entertaining and hilarious. yet keeps up the biting social satire.

When I began reading this novel, I was highly impressed with the narrative tone, the dream-like coherence of the story. The narrator is invited by an enigmatic figure to live in a kingdom on the other side (supposedly in some hazy realm between Europe and Asia). He brings his wife along. Eventually the wife dies. The narrator is left alone to fend for himself in the strange world of Pearl. I recognized the satire, the social commentary. For the first half, I was enthralled.

But I found the tale began to deteriorate into this rather brash and endless series of vignettes, all of which becoming more and more grotesque. Either the author was trying too hard to bombard his reader with imagery or he had other motives, I felt the novel became far too crowded with the absurd to merit any intelligence. I felt the absurdity began to wear thin because of this narrative 'kablooie'. The city of Pearl deteriorates, an apocalyptic vision of the end reminiscent of Revelations.

It is a dark satire, I understood that from the beginning but when it became extravagant to the point of nausea, I found myself flipping through the last pages until the end. A brilliant beginning but the novel ends with a visionary gauntlet making the last bit feel like the last stretch of a pseudo-intellectual race. I feel Kafka is superior to Kubin in that there is a genuine restraint and artistry to his ability to handle the absurd. Again, the idea and beginning is brilliant, but the ending is novice, leaving one dissatisfied and uneasy about the time spent finishing this book.

A man is visited by a person who is referring to an old schoolmate of the man, who in turn wants the man to come and live with him in his town in the middle of nowhere but with a good salary. As it turns out this town is built up by old houses that have been transported from Europe and other places, seemingly handpicked to give the town its special "atmosphere".
It is this "atmosphere" which really constitutes the essence of the book and it is hard to describe in few words.
Reading the book, I was spellbound from the beginning to the end as if I was reading something deeply essential and yet elusive and hard to pin down. The book isn't "artsy-fartsy" - don't get me wrong - there is something genuine here and a description of a panic-feeling, for instance, is absolutely correct (which is seldom the case in other books).
This is the only novel Alfred Kubin wrote and he was hesitant in publishing it. We can be grateful that he did for, as it stands, it is probably the most mysterious book ever written, reminiscent of both Meyrink and Hoffman yet still genuinely unique.