Impressions of Africa (Oneworld Classics)

A veritable literary melting pot, Roussel's groundbreaking text makes ample use of wordplay and the surrealist techniques of automatic writing and private allusion

The first and arguably more well known of Roussel's two major prose works, Impressions of Africa is not, as the title may suggest, a conventional travel account. Instead,it's one of the greatest experimental novels of all time—an adventure story put together in a highly individual fashion and with an extremely unusual time sequence—within which the reader is even made to choose whether they would like to begin at the first or the tenth chapter. It's also the only edition currently in print of a major French modern classic that was a great influence on the Surrealist movement.