Coming to this conclusion, it was not so surprising to realize that the subtitle—“Stories and aphorisms on animals, poets, and other earthly creatures“—is a better means of setting the context in which Stalin is Dead was likely intended to be consumed. The stories and aphorisms can be organized by daily observations in life, smug views of payback, and shock flash fiction—not the familiar backdrops of Kafka.

To add to the disorienting nature of the work, Rachel Shihor has placed Hebrew characters throughout the work to intentionally distract from the text. In these vignettes, she forms pictures and depicts word play with Hebrew characters that is both delightful and baffling at the same time. In some instances the characters are overlapped to the point of being illegible, they are also arranged to mimic the subject of a piece within the work, and they are also used to describe various word and character play only possible with Hebrew characters. However, these playful tricks would not be understood without the “Notes of Typograms” at the end of the text.

As you probably guessed, there were portions of this work that I did not understand and I will likely die trying to understand. Isn’t that what most authors want from a reader? An unabashed and perverse desire to attempt to understand their work? An example of this dichotomy between the delightfully thought-provoking and the frustratingly confusing can be seen in the two following excerpts from the work:

“I Left a Bad Impression”

I left a bad impression, definitely a bad impression, on the patrons of the Munich Opera House when they were listening to Judith Triumphant. And I didn’t even have to make an effort. The severed head was enough.

“Spiders”

When I looked the spider in the face I realized that despite his bone-chilling cruelty and despite him dedicating his life to capturing smaller helpless animals, his traps provoke wonder in the eyes of all who behold them.

I looked in his face again and saw a tiny moustache.

From reading the Conversational Reading interview (http://conversationalreading.com/the-rachel-shihor-interview/[conversationalreading.com]) with Rachel Shihor, I know that she sees animals as a reflection of society, but I am left scratching my head about the tiny “moustache” faces. A google search of “spider faces” was wholly unhelpful.

In closing, the genius of Rachel Shihor is fully realized in what was understandable and will be realized in the years to come in what I am still trying to grasp. The ability to induce epiphanies through revisits to a work is what literature is about. The only other author whom I am aware of who is greatly loved for her repeated deliberate inducement of confusion during an entire lifetime is Lispector herself.

These booklets (or, well, cahiers) are around 36-48 pages, are absolutely gorgeous (see second-rate photo below) and revolve around issues of translation. The first one was published back in 2006, and the 14th is on its way. The is available on the website, but some highlights include: “Ballade Nocturne” by Gao Xingian, “Translating Music” by Richard Pevear, “Jozef Czapski: A Life in Translation” by Keith Botsford, “Proust, Blanchot and a Woman in Red” by Lydia Davis, “Notes from the Hall of Uselessness” by Simon Leys, and “Walking on Air” by Muriel Spark. There’s also a forthcoming one by Laszlo Krasznahorkai.

As you can see, translation is at the center of a lot of these books—here’s a bit from Sylph Editions publisher Ornan Rotem on the purpose of the series:

The series is an exploration of writing and translation, the latter understood in very broad terms; that is to say, not only as the transition from one natural language to another, but also the shift between media and forms of expression. We refer to this expanded view of translation as “cultural translation” [sidenote—the AUP has an interesting, unique ] and that is why the series happily endorses and includes, besides obvious subjects such as literature, poetry, and drama, others like architecture, textile, music, and in the future, film. The visual component of the cahiers also forms an essential part of the exploration. I would go so far as to say that each cahier is suspended between the verbal and visual, and is the outcome of the interplay between these two components.

Daniel Medin also had this to say:

There are two main justifications for the Cahiers Series. The first is that we publish material that cannot easily be published anywhere else; we can play with form in a way that commercial publishers cannot. The second justification is to make something where the parts, through their relation to each other, add up to more than just that. (Something especially evident in the Spark, Leys, Gold, and Krasznahorkai.)

One thing I can’t emphasize enough is just how beautiful these books are. Not only are the designs simple and eye-catching, the quality of the paper is amazing, the full-color images inside are striking, the French flaps, the way they feel . . . Daniel called Ornan Rotem—publisher and designer—a “genius,” and I have to agree. This is one of those series that I would buy just to display these in my office . . .

Speaking of purchasing: via the you can buy a boxed set of volumes 1-6 (or a boxed set of volumes 7-12) for £51. Which is approximately $4,000, but like I said, these are really, really beautiful. (Kidding—£51 is only $75 and these are worth every dime.)