The secret life of Belgian Surrealist poet Mimi Hamoir is revealed in this shocking, macabre, and erotic compilation. Profusely illustrated with rare photos and ephemera from her hidden archive — compiled and translated by Lono Taggers — this collector’s edition is a must-have for fans of surrealism, the avant-garde, and vampirism.
Take a deep dive into Belgian Surrealism and Paul Delvaux in this special edition.
This extraordinary catalogue features full color reproductions of never-before-seen paintings, with specifications and background details on each work. It includes the original clandestine “Surrealist Map of Belgium” (with annotations), plus rare documents and archival photographs restored to their original glory.
Lono Taggers has spent years compiling this faux edition, scouring secondhand bookshops in Brussels and Paris—tracking down reclusive collectors and hostile connoisseurs—breaking into archives and bribing greedy relatives of Paul Delvaux.
Black Scat Books has spared no expense in bringing to light these exceedingly rare paintings and historic Surrealist documents.
CLICK HERE and order your copy now.
Featuring color reproductions of never-before-seen paintings, with specifications and background details on each work. Includes an original “Surrealist Map of Belgium,” plus rare documents and archival photographs.
This catalogue is published in association with the République Surréaliste de Belgique.
Those words from Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) are as true today as ever. But as any hard-boiled dick knows, solving a murder—or any crime for that matter—is no easy task. The proof of that lies in Lono Tagger‘s weird little picture-puzzle book: CRIME MEMES.
Discover imaginary crimes, impossible clues, contaminated evidence, red herrings, private a-eyes, surrealist stoolies, & masters of disguise.
WARNING: FORENSIC HUMOR
CRIME MEMES: A SURREALIST PUZZLE BOOK—just in time for the holidays.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lono Taggers is an insurgent collage artist and translator. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, educated in Great Britain, and lives in Paris with his wife and daughter. He has translated several notorious works by Pierre Louÿs, including A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France (New Urge Editions, Pocket Erotica Series: 2022). His experiments with AI-assisted collage have appeared in Roussel’s Revenge and Typo: The International Journal of Prototypes.
We invite you to double your treasure with this pair of backlist beauties.
CHARLES CROS: COLLECTED MONOLOGUES
Charles Cros was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, equally adept at poetry, fiction, and scientific inquiry. He wrote smutty verses with Verlaine, synthesized gems with Alphonse Allais, contributed wild prose fantasies to Le Chat Noir, and experimented with color photography and sound recording, only to die young, poor, and alcoholic. Not incidentally, he also invented the comic monologue for the actor Coquelin Cadet. This edition collects all of Cros’s monologues—masterfully translated & introduced by Doug Skinner—and includes performance notes, plus two biographical essays by his friend and colleague Alphonse Allais.
UPSIDE-DOWN STORIES
Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau were quintessential Bohemian poets. This first English translation of their inspired collaboration of “Upside-Down Stories” satirized hot topics of the 1880s such as as divorce and capital punishment with bawdy humor and wild flights of fancy. These nutty gems will surprise & delight contemporary readers.
“THE SHEER PLAYFULNESS OF CERTAIN FANCIFUL PARTS OF CROS’S WORK MUST NOT LET US FORGET THAT IN THE CENTER OF SOME OF HIS FINEST POEMS, A REVOLVER IS AIMED AT US.”—ANDRÉ BRETON
“There is another world and it is in this one.”
—Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard’s Capital of Pain (Capitale de la douleur ) appeared in 1926 and established his reputation as the preeminent French surrealist poet.
Éluard’s surrealist vision is illuminated by a painter’s eye; his imagery includes light, surfaces, reflections, sunlight, mirrors, halos and radiance, although he deploys them to evoke suffering, despair and emptiness. Details of the poet’s personal life are found in this collection’s two-part central poem, “In the Flame of the Whip.” Each line crackles with irrepressible power – resembling the criss-cross lash marks left on human flesh by the whip.
Both sides of the mirror are exposed in Capital of Pain – the reflective surface and the tain on its reverse side. The mirror is, of course, Éluard himself, because, as the collection’s title suggests, it reveals the poet’s private anguish and personal agony.
Paul Éluard was a dedicated and devoted surrealist who championed the juxtaposition of distinct elements and the play of dualities which give surrealist poetry its profundity and vitality. As readers, we are fortunate he chose to expose the mysterious and hidden aspects of his life with lyrical brilliance.
“…it is gratifying to find a collection of Paul Éluard’s poetry translated into English by R. J. Dent, and published (with a glorious cover!) by Black Scat Books – one of the last publishers to keep the flag of Olympia, Éditions Jean-Jacques Pauvert and Grove Press flying, with new writing as well as classics of Surrealism, the Absurd, Dada, Erotica and ‘Pataphysics…. All in all, Dent, a poet and novelist in his own right, demonstrates clearly the truth of the old maxim, it takes a poet to translate a poet.” —Reese Saxment, Surrealerpool
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Capital of Pain
Paul Éluard
Translated from the French by R J Dent
paperback; 132 pp., $14
Anna Karina holding Éluard’s Capitale de la douleur in
Godard’s classic film Alphaville.
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See what all the screaming’s about.
Inspired by Louis Aragon’s obscure surrealist text, this new adaptation by R J Dent proudly presents… [insert drumroll] the one and only, Jean-Fucque Le Cocque, a large, disembodied penis and his Parisian adventures — his satisfactory encounters with female passengers on the Metro, his small room in a hotel frequented by prostitutes, and his reason for buying a hat. (Mon dieu!)
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