EQUUS PRESS

03/07/2024

We at Equus Press are heartbroken at the recent passing of Jaffe (1938-2024).

Year-long editor-in-chief of the seminal literary-cultural journal "Fiction International," Hal was the author of 30 books, including 14 collections of fiction, four novels, and two volumes of essays. His works have been translated into 15 languages, including German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, and via PMF Prague Microfestival, recently also Czech. Always uncompromising in his sociopolitical critique as well as stylistic vision, Hal was a cultural force to be reckoned with. Our condolences to his family.

In 2022, Equus was the proud publisher of Hal’s Perfor-mances for the End of Time, a generically hybrid book comprised of brief performative texts and concluding with a short play called “Faust & Mephisto.“ The brief texts are caustic, eerie, and ironically comical. Each text is usually repeated more times with the same title but different con-tent, yet each text is ultimately about endings—small, lar-ge, and colossal. A series of dirges for the living-yet-already-departed, Performances for the End of Time “per-form” not a foreboding of what may be, but a scathing in-dictment of what now already is.

“This book is a blues sympathy. And a jazz suite. With a hip hop rhythm. […] Jaffe has written a timeless collection for the end of time.”—Larry Fondation
“From the beginning, Harold Jaffe has interrogated culture and our place as its victim. This volume haunts as it opens the curtain, revealing the end of time.”—Toby Olson
“A luminous, ambitious, and disturbing experiment of glo-bal vision […], weaving eloquent vulgarity into wisdom through a raw linguistic tapestry eclipsing despair.”—Aimee Parkison
“The damnedest, clearest-headed, most caring take on the world today there is.”—Tom Whalen

by Harold Jaffe ISBN 978-1-9996964-8-1. Paperback, 176 pp. Publication date: October 2022. Equus Press: London & Prague. Price: € 12.00 (not including postage). Order directly from Equus P…

21/06/2024

A book couch at the Lviv Art Center last night ft. books by Equus & Litteraria Pragensia Books, as well as copies of Alienist Magazine, VLAK Magazine: Contemporary Poetics & the Arts, PMF Prague Microfestival anthologies, and Krotch Magazine.

07/06/2024

One from the vaults: MENTAL SHRAPNEL, by Phillip O'Neil (Equus Press, 2020)

“Phillip O’Neil’s book is a study in hell. […] This is a brutal book. Its shifts in tone are often jarring. And yet that gives it a texture and a patina unlike any other book I’ve read.I would expect no less from Equus Press, whose experimental texts are at the forefront of the contemporary avant garde. As publishers, they don’t flinch from discomfort, and works of twisted brilliance like Mental Shrapnel are the result.This is a book that shoves you, then looks at you expectantly; waiting to be shoved back. A dynamic absolutely of our times.”
—Joseph Darlington, Manchester Review of Books

“Literature would be dead if it weren’t for publishers like Equus Press, a second-to-none specialist in narrative innovation, unique voices, and marginalized lines of flight. The latest contribution to the Equus project, Philip O’Neil’s MENTAL SHRAPNEL, is a refreshing, remarkable departure from the overwhelming horde of canned, lifeless fiction that threatens to eat literary history whole. O’Neil’s first novel makes almost everything else look like dreck. It’s precisely what the co**se of modern literature needs to bring it back to life.”
—D. Harlan Wilson

“Sinequanon threads of Gonzo journalism tie hot shards of Philip K. Dick’s paranoid fantasies to Kingsley Amis’ insouciant British humour in this 400-page pill, as we are flung between war-torn Sarajevo & post-communist Prague between the early 90s & the late 00s. [...] Mental Shrapnel is the author’s nostalgic su***de letter to Prague, left on a mantlepiece over the flaming fires of hell, propped up by a bowl of rotting oranges.”—Michael Rowland

“Equal parts memoir, war narrative, & love story, Mental Shrapnel takes you deep into the wounded psyche of a man forced to put himself back together when the health care “system” fails him completely. [...] Mental Shrapnel also paints an intimate nuanced picture of the city of Prague that will be instantly recognizable to longtime residents or serve as a psychedelic walking tour for those who have never traversed the narrow, labyrinthine streets of the city. Not a novel for the faint of heart, but still a compelling read full of wit, heart, and history.”
—Jeffrey Howe

a novel, by Phillip O’Neil ISBN 978-1-9996964-0-5. 392 pages. 1st edition. Paperback. Publication date: October 2020. Equus Press: London & Prague. Price: € 12.00…

03/06/2024

"At some point in the morning, Kafka gave the nurse a brusque sign that she was to leave the room. He then demanded a lethal dose of morphine from Klopstock. 'You've been promising it to me for four years.' Klopstock, who had been fearing this responsibility for weeks, balked and objected, but Kafka, who was now dependent on the decisions of others more than ever before, suddenly turned belligerent and accused Klopstock of being a murderer if he refused this final act of loyalty.
'You are torturing me; you have always been torturing me. I am not talking to you any more. I will die all on my own.' Klopstock injected Pantopon, an op**te, which was nearly as numbing as morphine. Kafka remained skeptical. 'Don't cheat me; you're giving mean antidote.'"
(Rainer Stach, KAFKA: THE YEARS OF INSIGHT, 570-1)

Here's Kafka's 11 Jun 1924 obituary notice in the "Národní listy" daily. In an irony he would have no doubt cherished, this compulsive walker and sportsman's death notice ended up tucked in between ads for "'Vera' American shoes" and "Berson shoe soles" whose effect renders "foot fatigue impossible."
An eery flashback to Joyce's Ulysses, where Mr Bloom spots an ad for "Plumtree's potted meat" right "under the obituary"(e.g. U 8.139) for his friend Paddy Dignam.

31/05/2024

Equus are happy to announce the publication of the 4th corrected edition of Louis Armand's THE COMBINATIONS, the “European anti-novel” in all its unrepentant glory, following in the tradition of Sterne, Rabelais, Cervantes, Joyce, and Perec. Kafka’s The Trial meets Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities.

In 8 octaves, 64 chapters and 888 pages, 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.

For the new corrected edition, 16 brand-new blurbs have been collected, from Ansgar Allen, Mike Corrao, Matthew Hall, Richard Makin, Tobias Ryan, Gary J. Shipley, John Trefry, R.G. Vasicek, D. Harlan Wilson, Karl Wolff, Madelaine Culver, Richard Marshall, Joe Darlington, Michel Delville, Zak Ferguson, and Michael John Rowland.

THE COMBINATIONS is available via Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and as Kindle.

https://equuspress.wordpress.com/the-combinations-4th-corrected-edition/

a novel, by Louis Armand ISBN 978-1-7394310-2-0. 4th (corrected) edition. Paperback. 888pp + ###vii. Publication date: May 2024 (1st edition published May 2016). Equus Press: London. Order fro…

28/05/2024

"If Tranter’s 'Generation of ’68' seems (however problematically) to retain a certain romantic appeal today, this may have less to do with the aspirations of '1968' to which Tranter nailed his manifesto, than with the unedifying spectacle of contemporary poets parading their gongs like some Latin American junta festooned in gold braid and brass. Behind the clamour of self- congratulation, the strains of disillusionment sound not so joyfully."

To end the two-week walkthrough the recent special issue of JEASA magazine (devoted to the work of Louis Armand) back at the beginning, here is another memorable quotation from the interview which opens it, of possible interest to Meanjin Quarterly, Australian Literary Studies, Australian Poetry Network (APN), courtesy of Journal of Australian Studies.

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2033
Photo of Louis Armand.

27/05/2024

ANIZAR spotted back where once upon a time it started off from:
at Bibliotheca "Sobremango" in Beja, Portugal.

24/05/2024

"The thing moving is a knee, and that snare
fabric, syncopated, delay pedal,
slow ear, hallway blown with
last night’s discoloured ideas..."

The ninth and final contribution to the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand is Bernard Cohen's "On Seeing the Galilean Moons," a creative response to Louis' poem, “Tür Zum Nichts.”

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2002

Photo of Bernard Cohen.

22/05/2024

"O shocking one, we may need to become their gravediggers
after all. Beauty is horror, horror beauty, that’s all
we’ll ever know in Hell; all we need to know."

The eighth contribution to the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand is Ali Alizadeh's "Ode to Offensia," a creative response to Louis' VAMPYR: A CHRONICLE OF REVENGE.

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2006

Photo of Ali Alizadeh.

21/05/2024

"In a world that is simultaneously so sure and unsure of itself, we are constantly in need of artists and thinkers willing to create from viewpoints that genuinely circumvent obfuscating traditions, such as realism, instead of merely sheathing themselves in the spectacle of appearing to. Armand and the Alienists position themselves in support of an emancipatory creativity, in an aesthetic, experimental and artistic sense. Armand’s détournement of genre promotes growth and mutation in those genres, cultivating uncertainty and expanding what they are capable of saying. By contrasting geographical coordinates with translocal prose, Armand accentuates the reductive characteristics of the language of coordinates, while highlighting the fecundity of translocality. Perhaps most importantly, Armand extends the discourse of realism, suggesting that an acknowledgement of the hyperreality of the present state of our reality presents the opportunity for an expansion of our awareness of what it is possible to say, do and think, unfettered by the inherent ideological constraints of realism."

In the seventh and final essay of the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand, entitled "Armand and Alienism: Generic Détournement, Translocality, and Hyperrealism in Louis Armand’s Cairo," Jack de Highden zooms in on the shift in Armand’s writing from focusing on poetry and shorter prose to longer forms of experimental fiction. These longer forms often mediate through a novelistic, noir genre frame, whilst consistently engaging with such themes as surveillance, the limits of realism, and the phenomenology of place. Jack de Highden’s article confronts Armandian alienism, with special emphasis on the anti-novel Cairo.

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2009

Photo of Jack de Highden.

20/05/2024

"We are immersed in systems of writing that give us the reassuring illusion of understanding. Communication. Control. Writing that seems complete, coherent, stable. There are always minor slippages, of course. That is what makes literature vital. But there are minor slippages, then there is the writing of Louis Armand. Scepticism on speed. Radical destabilisation. Work that affirms nothing definitive. I have certainly experienced something—moving, intense, unforgettable—yet I cannot communicate to you a simple takeaway message."

In the sixth essay of the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand, entitled "In Dialogue with Louis Armand," Dan Huppatz engages with Armand’s texts as well as paintings, portraying their author as a compositor, composer, compiler, and collagist capable of drawing multiple creative impulses and contexts into his dense vortex. Armand’s poetry as well as painting raises, for Huppatz, the fundamental question: “What happens when we mash two materials—or media—together?” This intermedial dialogue is found opposed to a confessional tendency in contemporary writing marked by a coherent author-subject who recalls significant events, people, places, in a clear, communicative language.

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2012
Photo of DJ Huppatz.

18/05/2024

"In the early years of the twenty-first century Louis Armand’s particular critical interpretation and poetic exposition showed that poetry, as a form, can be a philosophical gesture. Since developing a multifaceted cultural practice Louis Armand has continued to produce audacious mixed media works that are incisive, sardonic and serious."

In the fifth essay of the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand, entitled "Louis Armand--A Retro Record," Pam Brown opens with the provocative question, “What might an Australian writer who has lived in Prague for over a quarter of a century make of Australian culture?” In its light, Brown goes on to read collections like Letters from Ausland and Indirect Objects in order to document the “energetic and curious intellect driving the imaginary in these poems”. In her reading, Armand’s analytical thinking upsets conventional expectations, arranging a kind of sur- or hyperreality and fashioning fresh concepts.

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2015
Photo of Pam Brown.

17/05/2024

In the fourth essay of the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand, entitled "Shadows of the Future: Louis Armand’s Megaphones of Prague," Michel Delville focuses on Armand’s “post-lyric” collection VITUS, whose fusion
of poetry, photography, documentary, & other forms of artistry & criticism departs from traditional, linear notions of the aesthetics and politics of historical representation & commemoration. In Armand’s poetry, Delville traces the development of an entire phenomenology of the city of Prague in which the Derridean “hauntology” becomes not just a working method for social analysis but also a compositional technique in its own right.
Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2018
Photo of Michel Delville.

15/05/2024

"Armand’s works are many and of many kinds, objects, and of a variety of styles and “writings”; they cannot be subsumed under simple headings. To say poetry does not really qualify Armand’s corpus of non-fiction which he names poetry and the word fiction does not say much about these prose works which could be seen as novels. Any qualification remains uncertain because the manifest calculations which characterise these works’ developments do not expose constant rules or constraints, and leave Armand’s calculation of their details to the 'equality of
probability.'"

In the second essay of the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand, entitled "Meaning, 'Writing,' Reading, and the 'Equality of Probability' in Louis Armand’s Poetry and Fiction," Jean Bessière studies the various ambits of meaning, writing, & reading in Armand’s novels, poetry, & theory, in order to tackle the uneasy task of qualifying Armand’s corpus. For Bessière, the limitation imposed by Armand’s texts on reading has to do with the essence of the “literary,” which begins where metalanguage ceases, pointing to its etymological precursor & ally, "literacy." Bessière shows how Armand challenges the conventions of the "literary" by imploding the roles of writer & reader, & by allowing meaning to erupt from their interchangeability within social inertia.

Available online at: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2024
Photo of Jean Bessiere.

14/05/2024

"How do we define form for an artist who seeks to destroy the novel-form? Throughout his late work, Armand has used popular genres as a means of subversion and parody. Like an exploitation film-maker, the disreputable genre could be of use to slip in revolutionary ideas."

In the first essay of the recent special issue of JEASA magazine devoted to the work of Louis Armand, "How to Detonate the Novel" Karl Wolff contends that Armand's later fiction has worked towards detonating the novel in that in it, “form follows destruction.” In a panoramic overview of the Armand canon, Wolff’s crucial three points are that his writing does not seek refuge in a single type of fiction (the "false dichotomy" of the literary vs. popular), genre (mystery, thriller, epic), or scale (doorstopper vs. the novella) but instead searches for means of subversion and parody in the use of popular genres, while increasingly exploding the novel-form.

Available online at:
https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2027
Photo of Karl Wolff.

13/05/2024

"Covid brought out some of the most reactionary tendencies in society, particularly in the so-called 'left' which (in a bizarre marriage with Trumpism) have only been further amplified in the West since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to such an extent that elements on the 'left' are once again playing the role of the Kremlin’s useful idiots. The Ukrainian resistance should have opened wellsprings of liberatory thought in the West, instead the intelligentsia has produced equivocation & contradiction, unable to free itself of an ideological dualism in which critique is enchained to false consciousness."

The recent special issue of JEASA magazine, "Tribute to Louis Armand", opens with an interview Matthew Hall & I conducted with Louis Armand last year. The talk covered a range of topics, from the recent Covid-19 pandemic to the passing of John Tranter, from the “systems of power we call culture” to the failure of the Western “left” vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine, from the current wariness surrounding the emergence of AI to hypothesising what shapes its, and so-called humanity's, future might take.

The interview can be read online at:
https://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=2033

10/05/2024

Anizar (2024), by Louis Armand, is now available in its Kindle version--link on the Equus webpage.

ANIZAR: "In the glitchy Portuguese town of Anizar, Armand introduces the reader to an eccentric cast of characters. [...] In Anizar Armand has adapted his constantly erupting, playful writing into a fast-paced, delightfully comic novella.”—DJ Huppatz

https://equuspress.wordpress.com/anizar/

06/05/2024

Come one come all!

04/05/2024

On the 85th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), and on the eighth anniversary of its own first appearance, Equus are glad to announce the 4th re-edition (to come out later this month) of the corrected The Combinations, the “ultimate 90s Prague novel,” by Louis Armand.
To mark the joyful occasion, 2×8 blurbs on this 8-obsessed book of changes have been received, to be released soon.

Thanks are due to Ansgar Allen, Mike Corrao, Madelaine Culver, Joseph A. Darlington, Michel Delville, Zak Ferguson, Matt Hall, Richard Makin, Richard Marshall, Michael J. Rowland, Tobias Ryan, Gary J. Shipley, John Trefry, R.G. Vasicek, D. Harlan Wilson, and Karl Wolff.

16/04/2024

Richard Marshall on ANIZAR (2024), by Louis Armand:

"Armand creates the moment where the gods of modernism come down and sit themselves on the grass mats that we’ve carefully unrolled for them. Armand’s is, as ever, writing without the comfort of crafted images. Not because he distrusts them but because he knows we’re long past the point where narratives needed to copy them in stone. He is channeling them by a very strange and modern ritual, bridled with his vast arcana from the last century’s shadow works. It’s as if he’s showing us that if we’re to give up writing conventional narratives, he’s showing us that that’s got to be no less than a progressive abdication. He’s working a generative grammar looking for a reader a thousand years ahead of us, or from those ancient days basking in four thousand aphorisms and epigrams, a strange sci-fi phonology and morphology through which all light passes into night."

For other blurbs, ordering details and further information, please visit

ANIZAR by Louis Armand ISBN 978-1-7394310-3-7. Paperback, 124 pp. Publication date: April 2024. Order print copies from LULU, Bokus, Agapea, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, Magers&Quinn or Amaz…

12/04/2024

The ghost of Louis Armand’s ANIZAR has been spotted haunting Prague’s National Library. DM us if you’d like a review copy to be haunting your home library too!

09/04/2024

ANIZAR, by Louis Armand, is now available, as POD, not only from LULU, but also from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Bokus, Agapea, and Amazon. Links to all the online outlets on the book's webpage included below.

"Armand invites us into a funhouse of many hands. Jorge Amado kaleidoscopes with Manuel Puig & Cabrera Infante in this intramural reductio ad absurdum of bowdlerised caesars & rat-arsed revolutionaries & all the evolved flotsam of that ancient quarrel between poetry & the purgatorial social contract handed down from on-high or perhaps from atop a hill in Alentejo. Historical materialism is this: ANIZAR."

ANIZAR by Louis Armand ISBN 978-1-7394310-3-7. Paperback, 124 pp. Publication date: April 2024. Order print copies from LULU, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Magers&Quinn or Amazon. Armand invi…

01/04/2024

Happy publication day to ANIZAR, a novella by Louis Armand.
A darkly humorous tall tale of the carnivalesque unlife in the Alentejo region of Portugal with a colourful cast of eccentric characters coming to their variously sticky ends. From Albufarkas’ comic dialogues with his alter-ego; musings of the self-congratulatory poet João Sobremango; witty exchanges between theatre manager Carbonara Inverso & librarian-dominatrix, Senhora Epimedia; all the way to the mysterious murder of Caesar Salazarini.

Copies may be purchased via LULU, with Ingram & other outlets to follow soon. Review e-copies available upon demand.

“A surreal exploration of existence & perception unfolds amidst the backdrop of an alternative version of Portuguese history. Somewhere between James Joyce’s Ulysses & Thomas Pynchon’s best work, Anizar shows Armand once again writing dangerously about the fractured psyche & corroded self.”
—Michel Delville

“Louis Armand’s tangled enigma is full of parody, nonsensical monologue, &, as if from dreams on the edge of nightmare, carnivalesque vulgar & ultra tricky characters. This gripping seductive mystery is located in a Portuguese municipality that has no renowned author for tourists to consume. Tourists – Pare de sofrer, existe uma solução! Stop suffering, there is a solution! – read this startling work, Anizar.”
—Pam Brown

“A multiple & playful narrative, [...] Anizar is at once a vital exercise & an enjoyable practice of literary deconstruction, reflexivity & irony.”
—Jean Bessière

“In Anizar Armand has adapted his constantly erupting, playful writing into a fast-paced, delightfully comic novella.”
—DJ Huppatz

“Ostensibly, a portrait of the Portuguese municipality of Beja, painted in runic cryptomorphs. It means nothing, it could mean everything — our mortal coil in crosshairs stencilled red, where death is the most common way of life — non-existence, an indeterminate being-here, where alienation is love’s counterpart.”
—Richard Makin

ANIZAR by Louis Armand ISBN 978-1-7394310-3-7. Paperback, 124 pp. Publication date: April 2024. Order print copies from LULU, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Magers&Quinn or Amazon; or dow…

27/03/2024

Proud to become, at long last, part of the Asterism family of small presses!
Czech out our Publisher Webpage, ft. such long-out-print gems as Daniela Cascella's SINGED, Louis Armand's GlassHouse, D. Harlan Wilson's NATURAL COMPLEXIONS, and Ken Nash's LIFE RAFT.
https://asterismbooks.com/publisher/equus-press

16/03/2024

Máme otevřeno! Equus, Litteraria Pragensia Books, VLAK Magazine: Contemporary Poetics & the Arts, OBJECT:PARADISE a Alienist Press se dnes účastní BookFest Praha 2024 v Kampus Hybernská. Přijďte pobejt!
We are open! Equus, Litteraria Pragensia Books, Vlak Magazine, OBJECT:PARADISE and Alienist Press have a bookstand at BookFest Prague in Hybernska Kampus. Come one, come all!

13/03/2024

Spolu s Litteraria Pragensia Books se bude Equus účastnit letošního knižního veletrhu BookFest Praha 2024, který proběhne tuto sobotu 16/03 v areálu Kampus Hybernská. Přijďte pobejt a koupit si naše nové i starší tituly za výhodné ceny. Ke koupi budou i magazíny Krotch a další časopisecké tituly.

Together with Litteraria Pragensia Books, Equus will be featured at this year's BookFest Praha 2024 book fair, taking place this Saturday 16 Mar at the Kampus Hybernská. Come for a chat at our bookstand, which will offer our specially-priced backlist of both newer and older books. Also available will be issues of Krotch magazine and other journals.

Kampus Hybernská je komplex domů a dvůr v Hybernské ulici, kde se setkává kreativita, umění, inovace a akademický svět. Probíhají zde přednášky, performance, koncerty, výstavy, projekce, diskuze a další akce pro širokou veřejnost.

19/02/2024

We are back. After a two-month shutdown of our Faculty of Arts book storage (following the tragedy of 21/12/23), a poignant reunion with all our post-2019 titles, patiently awaiting our return…
Ft. the work of Ken Nash, Mike Corrao, Michael Rowland, Ryan Madej, Harold Jaffe, Ansgar Allen, René Georg Vasicek & Zak Ferguson.

30/12/2023

To bid farewell to yet another difficult year for the planet & the world of small publishing, Equus Press’ very own David Vichnar selects and introduces 7 of the more interesting books of 2023. Featured presses include Anti-Oedipus Press, 11:11 Press, Inside the Castle, Expat Press, and Orbis Tertius, among others.

To bid farewell to yet another difficult year for the planet & the world of small publishing, Equus Press’ very own David Vichnar selects 7 of the more interesting books of 2023 by Anti-Oedipus…