The Peacock Escritoire with At Dusk – Mark Valentine

Description

The Peacock Escritoire

A stranger returns a silver coin; a dream museum releases its dreams; a dying Futurist knows more than he can tell; the author of Dr Saprophyte has plans for his last volume; a park-keeper makes his books from autumn leaves; an Alexandrian jasper gem holds clues to serpentine secrets; in Prague a street artist meets fortune-tellers in a tower above the city. All these possibilities and more are to be found in Mark Valentine’s sought-after collection, The Peacock Escritoire.

    This new Tartarus Press edition offers three previously uncollected stories: ‘Wine of the Serpent’, ‘So, About Hats’ and ‘That Nothing Human Scorn’. The long story ‘The Return to Trebizond’, about the lost heir of a Caucasian principality and the last echoes of the Byzantine Empire, is also included.

At Dusk

Previously only available in a long out-of-print, highly limited edition, At Dusk is a book of brief vignettes of interwar European writers and visionaries, described by Michael Schmidt of PN Review as ‘a very interesting set of cameo meditations’.