The Combinations

Fiction. Drama. Art. The European anti-novel in all its unrepentant glory is here in THE COMBINATIONS following in the tradition of Sterne Rabelais Cervantes Joyce Perec. In 8 octaves 64 chapters and 888 pages Louis Armands THE COMBINATIONS is an unprecedented work of attempted fiction that combines the beauty & intellectual exertion that is chess with the panorama of futility & chaos that is Prague (a.k.a. Golem City) across the 20th-century and before/after. Golem City the ship of fools boarded by the famed Ds (e.g. John) and Ks (e.g. Edward) of the 16th/17th centuries (who attempted and failed to turn lead into gold) and the infamous Hs (e.g. Adolf e.g. Reinhard) of the 20th (who attempted and succeeded in turning flesh into soap). Armands prose weaves together the Citys thousand-and- one fascinating tales with a deeply personal account of one lost soul set adrift amid the early-90s awakening from the nightmare that was the previous half-century of communist Mitteleuropa. THE COMBINATIONS is a text whose 1) erudition dazzles 2) structure humbles 3) monotony never bores 4) humour disarms 5) relentlessness overwhelms 6) storytelling captivates 7) poignancy remains poignant and 8) style simply never exhausts itself. Your move Reader.