The Green Face – Gustav Meyrink
The Green Face by Gustav Meyrink / ISBN 9781910213896 / 224-page paperback from Dedalus European Classics
With the Estonian artist Juri Arrak on the cover.
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“Of the volumes available to the English public, The Green Face, first published in 1916, is the most enjoyable. In an Amsterdam that very much resembles the Prague of The Golem, a stranger, Hauberisser, enters by chance a magician’s shop. The name on the shop, he believes, is Chidher Green; inside, among several strange customers, he hears an old man, who says his name is Green, explain that, like the Wandering Jew, he has been on earth ‘ever since the moon has been circling the heaven.’ When Hauberisser catches sight of the old man’s face, it makes him sick with horror. The face haunts him. The rest of the novel chronicles Hauberisser’s quest for the elusive and horrible old man.”–Alberto Manguel
“This is a book rich in ideas, its text dense with occult imagery and thought, fascinating theories about the nature and purpose of our lives, and I think it would take me several readings to unravel all its sense. There is excellent characterisation.”–Black Static
Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932) found worldwide critical and commercial acclaim with his first novel The Golem (1915), which prior to the Dedalus Meyrink program has been the only work available in English. It established his reputation as the master of the occult and the grotesque. Dedalus published a new translation of The Golem in 1995, and the first English translations of The Green Face, Walpurgisnacht, The Angel of the West Window, The White Dominican, The Opal (and other stories) which were followed by The Dedalus Meyrink Reader.
