Reinhardt's Garden

In this delightfully dense, fast-paced comedy with notes of L+szl-- Krasznahorkai and Saul Bellow, Jacov and his scribe cross continents in search of the legendary prophet of melancholic philosophy.philosophy.

About the author

Mark Haber’s 2008 collection of stories, Deathbed Conversions, was translated into Spanish in 2017. He has served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts translation grant as well as the Best Translated Book Award. He lives in Houston, Texas, where he is a bookseller and the operations manager of Brazos Bookstore.

Summary

In this delightfully dense, fast-paced comedy with notes of László Krasznahorkai and Saul Bellow, Jacov and his scribe cross continents in search of the legendary prophet of melancholic philosophy.

Foreword

Endorsements: Rodrigo Frésan, Hernan Diaz, Guadalupe Nettel
Early access copies
National print, radio, and online campaign
Targeted bookseller mailing
Promotion at: AWP, Texas Book Festival (potential), BEA
Promotion on Coffee House Press e-­newsletter, website, and social media channels
Giveaways on Twitter, Instagram, & Goodreads
Simultaneous print and e­book release, with e­book ISBN to be included on all press materials, author and publisher websites, and whenever print ISBN is listed
Targeted publicity to promote author's speaking engagements
6-city author tour

Additional text

“Jacov Reinhardt and his faithful assistant roam South America in a quixotic search for the essence of melancholy—an enterprise that makes Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, their rough contemporary, come off as a levelheaded pragmatist. To follow Reinhardt, fueled by amounts of cocaine not even Sigmund Freud could have managed, is to walk into a fascinating literary maze that spans from Ulrich Schmidl’s chronicles to the decadent movements in turn-of-the-century Europe and Latin America. Melancholy has never felt more euphoric than in Mark Haber’s breathless paragraph-long novel.” —Hernan Diaz

“Evokes Gertrude Stein, contemporary European and South American writers like Matthias Énard, Roberto Bolaño, and César Aira, with the Quixotic atmosphere of Werner Herzog films like Fitzcarraldo…A strange but lavishly imagined tale of a hard-to-describe feeling.” —Kirkus

“An exhilarating fever dream about the search for the secret of melancholy . . . Haber’s dizzying vision dextrously leads readers right into the melancholic heart of darkness.” —Publishers Weekly

“Haber, who has been called 'one of the most influential yet low-key of tastemakers in the book world,' is about to raise it up a level with the debut of his novel.” —The Millions

“In prose as sure as a poison-laced dart, Mark Haber takes the reader on a delirious journey to the heart of melancholy.” —Sjón

“An adventurous journey into the country of melancholy. A fascinating dissection of human vulnerability.” —Guadalupe Nettel

“Reinhardt’s Garden is one of those perfect books that looks small and exotic and melancholic from the outside but, once in, is immense and exultant in the best possible way. Think Amulet by Roberto Bolaño, think Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, think Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, think Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, think Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto, think The Loser by Thomas Bernhard. Think.” —Rodrigo Fresán

“It’s official: [Mark Haber]’s novel about melancholy is a laugh riot. Narrated by the devoted assistant of pseudo-intellectual Jacov Reinhardt, the reader follows along for their increasingly misbegotten, cocaine-fueled adventures across Europe and South America. Told in one long, feverish paragraph with sentences that surprise at nearly every turn, Reinhardt’s Garden is a gorgeous, joyful, tiny epic. I loved it, and more importantly it got me out of yet another reading rut. Preorder this bad boy from an indie bookstore or [Coffee House Press] please!” —Annie Metclaf, Magers and Quinn Booksellers

PRAISE FOR MARK HABER

“[Mark Haber’s] infinite, fast-paced energy is transparent in the way these stories are constructed. There is no room for awkward silence or meaningless descriptions; everything fits as in a well-told joke that builds on its own momentum. His prose maintains not only a rhythm that seems like a continued punch-line but when it finally arrives at a safe landing place it delivers a terrible reality: the absurdity of failure in his characters’ conditions of possibility tells us way more than what we expected. It is humbling and depressing, all at once.” —Bruno Ríos, Argonáutica

Product details

• Authors: Mark Haber
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2019
• EAN: 9781566895620
• ISBN: 978-1-56689-562-0
• No. of pages: 168
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 197 mm x 10 mm
• Weight: 180 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Historical / General, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Absurdist, FICTION / Humorous / Black Humor