LOCUS SOLUS by Raymond Roussel

Calder & Boyars / University of California Press,1970, First edition thus, 254 pp., 5 1/2" X 8 1/4", Hardcover

Very good- (some general tanning, soiling and handling wear)

An intoxicating sui generis novel by “the greatest mesmerist of modern times” (André Breton)

The wealthy scientist Martial Canterel guides a group of visitors through his expansive estate, Locus Solus, where he displays his various deranged inventions, each more spectacular than the last. First, he introduces a machine propelled by the weather, which constructs a mosaic out of varying hues of human teeth, then shows a hairless cat charged with a powerful electric battery, and next a bizarre theater in which corpses are reanimated with a special serum to enact the most important movements of their past lives. Wondrously imaginative and narrated with Roussel’s deadpan wit,Locus Solusis unlike anything else ever written.