Big Other Book Award FinalistWorld Literature Today “Notable Translations of the Year” selection“Fiercely original.” —Kirkus Reviews“Full of wonder. . . . Aseroë is a lyrical contemplation of how words affect reality.” —Foreword Reviews“[An] enigmatic and radiant book.” —Maurice Blanchot“This over-the-top, extraordinary novel, in its no less stupendous translation, begins with a mycological intimacy that brings to mind the great mushroom scenes of the film Phantom Thread. How not to be aroused by this whopping treat of verbal virtuosity?” —Mary Ann Caws, author of The Modern Art Cookbook and Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism“A singular novel. Aseroë’s storyteller speaks from within the grasp of mysterious and urgent preoccupations. Yet his confident narration, rich in colorful, familiar detail, and sensitively and gracefully rendered into English by master translator Richard Sieburth, assures us of his obsessions’ importance to him and, within his brilliant and bizarrely convincing world, increasingly to us.” —Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t and Essays OneWhat a wonderful piece of writing! What an exhilarating adventure! What a madcap exploration of mushrooms, paintings, Rimbaud, the legend of Orpheus, and the mazes of a poet’s mind, in a jigsaw puzzle of a book that ultimately (like Alice’s Wonderland) makes absolute sense!” —Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night and Fabulous Monsters: Dracula, Alice, Superman, and Other Literary Friends“An immensely pleasurable read.” —Pascal Quignard, Prix Goncourt award–winning author of The Roving Shadows“In this book oblivion is daylight.” —Éric Vuillard, Prix Goncourt award–winning author of The Order of the Day“A book filled to the gills with a veritable feast of literary ingredients. To read Aseroë is to experience a kind of inebriation as we drink in the intelligence and the talent of its author.” —Marie Étienne, La Quinzaine Littéraire“Ranging from the mysterious mushroom known by the name of Aseroë to Giorgione’s painting The Tempest, while meditating on the millions made off the work of Rimbaud, [Aseroë] offers a series of astonishing and detailed variations on the theme of the figures of forgetfulness.” —Claire Devarieux, Libération