Adventures In Immediate Irreality

Max Blecher, born in 1909 into a Jewish family in Romania, contracted tuberculosis of the spine at 19, and spent the rest of his life in hospitals. Despite his illness, he wrote steadily and carried on an intense correspondence with many, including André Breton, André Gide, and Martin Heidegger. He died at the age of 28. Working with great Czech, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French, Italian, German,  and Dutch authors, Michael Henry Heim—one of America’s greatest translators—won many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the PEN Translation Prize.

"When you read his books it's hard to believe your eyes. The author of this masterpiece was a twenty-five-year-old already weakened by disease, but Blecher's words don't merely describe the objects—they dig their talons into the things and hoist them high."