The Story of the King of Bohemia
and
his Seven Castles

Charles Nodier

Translated by Brian Stableford

The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, here presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the most unusual works of Charles Nodier, and can readily be seen as a remote precursor of Alfred Jarry’ s “pataphysics,” Guillaume Apollinaire’s “surrealism” and Dadaism.

Originally published in 1830, more than a hundred years before the publication of James Joyce’ s Finnegans Wake, Nodier’ s novel, like the latter, is a highly avant-garde work of dream fiction.

It is deliberately incoherent, and in places deliberately incomprehensible, but its incoherence is never without an underlying purpose and an underlying schema, partly because it takes for granted the thesis that the apparent incoherence, inconsequentiality and incomprehensibility of real dreams must have an underlying purpose, however arcane, and an underlying schema, however bizarre—and that expeditions in literary surrealism are valuable processes of exploration, capable of offering valuable and unique rewards.

It is, in its own peculiar fashion, a masterpiece of intelligence, wit and literary artistry.

This edition of The Story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles supplements the title novel with three related texts: “On the Phenomena of Sleep,” an essay on dreams, and two biographical fantasies, “Polichinelle,” and “The Bibliomaniac.”

About the Author
Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was one of the pioneers of French Romantic prose; his salon at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, begun in 1824 and known as Le Cénacle, brought together many of the key figures in the Movement and spun off other cénacles in which it was anchored, including Victor Hugo’s. His best work consists of short stories and novellas.

About the Translator
Brian Stableford has been writing for fifty years. His fiction includes include eleven novels and seven short story collections in a series of “tales of the biotech revolution”; a series of metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin, most recently Yesterday Never Dies (2012); and a series of supernatural mysteries set in an artist’s colony, most recently The Pool of Mnemosyne (2018). Recent novels independent of any series include Vampires of Atlantis (2016) and The Tangled Web of Time (2016). He also translates antique works from the French, with particular interests in the Symbolist and Decadent Movements, roman scientifique and the fantastique.

Paperback, 290 pages. Release date: February 14, 2023
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-123-1
Price: US$22.00