The Irreal Reader: Description & TOC

In November, Guide Dog Books will release The Irreal Reader: Fiction & Essays from The Cafe Irreal, edited by G.S. Evans and Alice Whittenburg. We're very excited about this anthology and it's been a long time in the making. Here is the cover description and the full table of contents.

The Cafe Irreal: International Imagination, a pioneering web-based literary magazine, first went online in 1998 with the intention of publishing a type of fantastic fiction most often associated with writers such as Franz Kafka, Kobo Abe and Jorge Luis Borges. To this end, it has published more than 250 authors from over 30 countries. In the course of the past fifteen years, it has also seen its editors nominated for a World Fantasy Award and been named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 30 Short Story Markets. In this anthology, Guide Dog Books presents a selection of the fiction and essays from The Cafe Irreal that take us most definitively into the realm of the Irreal. These include pieces by Diploma de Honor Konex winner Ana María Shua (Argentina), Michal Ajvaz (winner of the Magnesia Litera prize in the Czech Republic), Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Simic, and Pushcart Prize winners Bruce Holland Rogers and Caitlin Horrocks.

CONTENTS

Preface

FICTIONS

TERRY DARTNALL
The Santa Fe

ANA MARÍA SHUA
From Geisha House
From Botany of Chaos

EWALD MURRER
From The Diary of Mr. Pinke

KEVIN SEXTON
The Spindler 

KUZHALI MANICKAVEL
Kisi Shayar Something Something
Cats and Fish
Because We Are Precious and Brave

CHARLES SIMIC
Seven Prose Poems

NORMAN LOCK
Unreal Geography
The Cruelty of Poetry

VANESSA GEBBIE
Storm Warning
The Note-Takers

PETER CHERCHES 
From Mr. Deadman

JIŘÍ KRATOCHVÍL
A Sad Play
From the Pulps

PAUL BLANEY
The Restaurant
I Came Highly Recommended
I Dreamed and in My Dream
As I Walked Out
How the Universe Works

GREG JENKINS
I Feel My Temperature Risin'

CAITLIN HORROCKS
Herzenboogen's Theory of Collective Truth

GUIDO EEKHAUT
Just Words

GIRIJA TROPP
Cellular

MICHAL AJVAZ
The City and Heaven

LEE WILLIAMS
The Kn!ghts of Slipway Seven

GLEYVIS CORO
The Fever

BOB THURBER
Shuteye

ALEXANDRA BERKOVÁ
From Magoria

D.E. LUCAS
Of the Minotaur

B E TURNER
The Comedy of Art

MAURICIO ROSALES
Poster

RICHARD KOSTELANETZ
Openings

HARRY WHITE
The Best of the Besht

BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS
Witness
The Ledger Angel

BRIAN BISWAS
A Betrayal

JIRI VALOCH
semantical studies

J.B. MULLIGAN
The Man in the Red Raincoat
The Message
A White Chair

UTAHNA FAITH
All Girl Band

EMILIO MARTINEZ
News from Burgundia

D. HARLAN WILSON
Giraffe

DAVID RAY
Seven Pieces of Meat

VIT ERBAN
A Small, Cold Sun
The Belly of the Centipede

STEPHANIE HAMMER
Mayoral Morbitas

PETER GRANDBOIS
Sewing 

TOMÁŠ PŘIDAL
From The Coconut Ape

JOSÉ CHAVES
All I Misunderstood as a Man Makes
Complete Sense as a Parrot

THEORETICAL WRITINGS

G.S. EVANS
What Is Irrealism?

ALICE WHITTENBURG
On International Imagination

GARRETT ROWLAN
The Waking Dream: A Review of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled

G.S. EVANS
Irrealism Is Not a Surrealism: A Consideration of Analogon #32

GARRETT ROWLAN
Irrealism and the Visual Arts

G.S. EVANS
From “American Irrealism and the Cult of Experience”

DEAN SWINFORD
From “Defining Irrealism: Scientific Development and Allegorical Possibility”

G.S. EVANS
A Response to “Defining Irrealism” 

DEAN SWINFORD
A Response to “A Response to ‘Defining Irrealism’”

G.S. EVANS
Irrealism and the Dream-State

ALICE WHITTENBURG
From “Finding the Strange in the Familiar: Irreal Stories by Women Writers”

G.S. EVANS
Magical Realism and Its Meanings: A Not So Necessary Confusion

GARRETT ROWLAN

Irrealism and Ambient Music

G.S. EVANS
This Could Be a Pipe: Foucault, Irrealism and Ceci n'est pas une pipe

G.S. EVANS AND ALICE WHITTENBURG
After Kafka: Kafka Criticism and Scholarship as a Resource in an Attempt to Promulgate a New Literary Genre

Afterword