I Hear Voices

At once confined and liberated by his madness, the hero and narrator of I Hear Voices takes us on journeys through his private, transfigured city. The vehicle is his own deranged mind, fueled by the absurdities of modern life. Lovers of Beckett and Ionesco will recognize much in Paul Abelman's world, where the fantastic and the real coexist in a hilarious, disquieting detente. This first American edition brings to a new audience a literary masterpiece which was originally published in 1958 by Olympia Press in Paris; and, in fact, Maurice Girodias, who was also responsible for first issuing Lolita and The Ginger Man, claimed that I Hear Voices was the book that gave him the greatest pleasure to publish.

"The spate of novels from the English publishers is so thick and full that it seems hard to believe that any writer of the least talent should be rejected. This brilliant and terrible little book shows that we have no grounds for such complacency. After hawking his typescript around London Mr. Ableman at last resigned himself . . . to accepting the generous services of The Olympia Press in Paris. Thus English readers have been largely deprived of a strikingly fresh and original work of art which happens, by an accident of the times, to be well outside the current fashion. I Hear Voices is recounted by an imaginary schizophrenic; and this device is used to present a marvelous entanglement of different levels of reality. 'In reality' the hero is lying in a room; he tries to eat his breakfast; receives occasional visits. But by means of his madness, he can constantly get up and leave the house to encounter a wonderful series of dreamlike adventures. The writing is brilliant, Mr. Ableman can be both terrifying and hilariously funny; yet his book has not been thought worthy of publication in this country."—Phillip Toynbee, London Observer, Oct. 16, 1960.