Raymond Roussel

"The wealthy scientist Cantarel is taking a group of visitors on a tour of Locus Solus, his secluded estate near Paris. One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile mind: a tool which, when activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth; a vast aquarium in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory; a theatre in which corpses are administered specially concocted serums that allow them to recreate the most memorable moments of their past lives. As the inventions become more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of the author's stories grow to match them, and the reader is swept along in a torrent of wonder and hilarity. Based, like the earlier 'Impressions of Africa', on Roussel's own uniquely eccentric principles of composition, 'Locus Solus is unlike anything else in twentieth-century literature."--B.cover.

While shipwrecked in a mythical African land, passengers stage a gala and entertain the chieftain Talou, their captor, with bizarre performances, including a zither-playing worm, a marksman who can peel an egg at fifty yards, and others.