Called by some the French Borges, by others the creator of le nouveau roman a generation ahead of its time, Raymond Queneau's work in fiction continues to defy strict categorization. The Flight of Icarus (Le Vol d'lcare) is his only novel written in the form of a play: seventy-four short scenes, complete with stage directions. Consciously parodying Pirandello and Robbe-Grillet, it begins with a novelist's discovery that his principal character, Icarus by name, has vanished. This, in turn, sets off a rash of other such disappearances. Before long, a number of desperate authors are found in...

-- First paperback edition.
-- Formally inventive and utterly joyous, Grabinoulor recounts the fantastic adventures of its light-hearted, satyric, eponymous hero as he visits other planets, time travels, and finds poetry everywhere he goes.
-- Grabinoulor has been praised highly by authors as diverse as Apollinaire, Celine, and Queneau.
-- Albert-Birot founded and edited one of the first avant-garde book reviews, SIC, which published the futurists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists. Grabinoulor was first published in its pages.
-- First U.S. edition by Dalkey Archive ('87).