Palimpsest Now!

"Palimpsest just knocks me flat with her use of language: rich, cool, opiated language, language for stories of strange love and hallucinated cities of the mind.”
— Warren Ellis

"It's never enough to merely read a book like the Palimpsest, it has to be imbibed, and its sensuality fully savoured."
--Nick Bantock, author of The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy

Just a reminder that Palimpsest is on the shelves as of yesterday. My own copy is in the post, and will hopefully arrive today. If you enjoyed the original short story (previously posted), maybe consider ordering the book, or pick it up at your local independent bookseller?

Palimpsest

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse -- a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important -- a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.

The novel, by Catherynne M. Valente, comes out in February (you can preorder--I did), but in the meantime I strongly encourage you to stoke your senses with the original short story at Senses Five Press. The question I'm dying to see answered is: can she keep up this level of dream-drenched intensity over the length of a novel? Do I ever hope so.

=PD

Literature: A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica

Clarkesworld Magazine presents, for your reading pleasure, a lovely short story by Catherynne M. Valente: A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica.

The title is entirely accurate as to the form of the piece, through which device gradually unfolds a history of great delicacy and beauty, which evokes an almost Dunsanian elegiac whimsy. I do not wish to spoil the story by offering specifics, but there are images which will stay with me.



This Plague of Dreaming is not affiliated with either Catherynne Valente or Clarkesworld Magazine, and offers this link simply as a free show of admiration for a wonderful story.