Description

The Peacock Escritoire -with- At Dusk by Mark Valentine

Hardcover – Tartarus Press – 2023 – 243 pages

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’.

All copies of this limited edition title will be signed by the author.