Twisted Spoon Press

08/04/2026

Ria Dhull at Heavy Feather Review: "Serner’s Dada roots peek through the darkness of The Tigress; there is something of the absurd within its chaos. Using his characters as a vehicle, Serner carefully breaks down the rules and systems of language, and in this decay and inversion, he creates a madness that spreads like a virus."

Some years after Walter Serner helped bring Dadaism to Zurich, he broke away from the movement. The Tigress, perhaps Serner’s most famous work, emerged in the period after Serner’s detachment from …

09/03/2026

The Modern Novel on Emil Hakl's Of Kids & Parents, tr. by Marek Tomin: "Neither title nor the premise of this book might seem particularly interesting but don’t let either put you off as this is a very fascinating book."

Home » Czech Republic » Emil Hakl » O rodičích a dětech (Of Kids and Parents)) Emil Hakl: O rodičích a dětech (Of Kids and Parents) Neither title nor the premise of this book might seem particularly interesting but don’t let either put you off as this is a very fascinating book. It simply...

07/01/2026

M.A. Orthofer reviews Gerhard Rühm's THE FOLDED CLOCK (tr. Alexander Booth):
"The variety in the folded clock is almost astonishingly great. If all conceived somehow around numbers, Rühm does much more than simply offer a few variations on a few themes – of either subject matter or approach. [...] It all makes for an interesting and rich collection that goes beyond being mere exercises in playing with numbers."

A review, and links to other information about and reviews of the folded clock by Gerhard Rühm.

21/12/2025

"Of course, despite The Tigress’s erotic, nihilist reputation—one that eventually led the N***s to ban and burn it—Serner’s novel has quite a few philosophical elements to offer the book’s audience."

Reviewed by Nicole Yurcaba

25/11/2025

Tomorrow, Nov. 26 at Café Club Míšeňská (Míšenska 3, Malá Strana) Alexander Booth will be presenting his translations of Gerhard Rühm. All Welcome.
Doors open at 19:00, we'll start some time later.

For reference:
the folded clock
https://www.twistedspoon.com/folded-clock.html
cake & prostheses
https://www.twistedspoon.com/cake-and-prostheses.html
Interview with Alex:
https://www.scribd.com/.../Interview-with-Alexander-Booth See less

28/10/2025

Now available: The Folded Clock by Gerhard Rühm, trans. by Alexander Booth, artwork by G. Rühm

Like Kurt Schwitters before him, Gerhard Rühm has incorporated numerals and digits into his visual and aural poetry since the early days of Wiener Gruppe in the 1950s. The Folded Clock brings together these number poems, comprising typewriter ideograms, typed concrete poetry, collages of everyday paper ephemera and scraps, and a wide variety of literary forms where the visual pattern created on the page underpins the thematic meaning. Blurring the distinction between “counting” and “recounting,” his "recitations" imaginatively translate arithmetic vocabulary into the mundane, the existential, or the cosmic, such as a history of the universe narrated as a solar year, from the Big Bang on January 1 to the moon landing in the last seconds of New Year’s Eve. Rühm's images and texts unleash the sensual qualities of numerals to subvert our digit-filled environment with its pervasive intensification of seamless control.

Ordering info here:
https://www.twistedspoon.com/folded-clock.html

Interview with translator:
https://www.scribd.com/document/929958324/Interview-with-Alexander-Booth

30/09/2025

Apropos of "Banned Book Week," The Tigress, the only novel by Walter Serner, is now available and on the way to the distributors for publication in November in the U.K. and December in the U.S.

When Bichette, the eponymous Tigress and uncrowned queen of Paris prostitutes, meets the grifter Fec, the unbelievable seems to happen: she is “tamed” and falls head over heels for him — and he for her. This sets off a dangerous game that spirals toward wild escalation in the luxury hotels and casinos of the French Riviera before reaching its grotesque culmination in Montmartre. The nihilism and invented personas recall Serner’s engagement with Dada as nothing anyone says or does can be taken at face value. Everything becomes a con, and love the greatest con of all.

More info here:
https://www.twistedspoon.com/the-tigress.html

24/08/2025

"Tereza Veverka Novická, who also translated Brabcová’s English debut, Aviaries, has bravely and fluently rendered Brabcová’s work, and her talents are most evident when she captures the author’s dark humor."

Zuzana Brabcová’s Ceilings dwells in a place where play and terror occur simultaneously.

Toggling between the perspectives of two siblings, in malleable hospital spaces, the novel refuses to let illness be finalized into something easily digestible:
https://tinyurl.com/29m7h3mh

14/08/2025

Marek Šindelka, Nathan Fields (transl.), Petr Nikl (artwotk), ‘Aberrant’, Twisted Spoon Press, 2017

12/08/2025

James Dyer writes on V. Nezval's A Prague Flaneur for Full Stop:

"Despite its lack of fixed direction or definite purpose, A Prague Flâneur (originally Pražský chodec) is rooted in the parks, streets, bars, and cafes of Prague in a surprisingly concrete way. From the street level, as the author Vítězslav Nezval sees it, Prague surpasses its “practical necessity” and expands into a dynamic host for memories, a rouser of imagination, and a stage peopled with extraordinary characters. This “peripatetic book” sketches a Prague that is uniquely personal to Nezval."

Prague surpasses its “practical necessity” and expands into a dynamic host for memories

25/07/2025

M.A. Orthofer has posted a review of Gerhard Rühm's Cake & Prostheses (tr. Alex Booth):
"It's a fun collection, especially in the creative stage-experiments. Rühm is not unserious, but there is a humorous edge to many of the pieces -- and quite a few are quite erotically charged as well. There's nice variety here, too, making for a good sampler of Rühm's work and language-play (with music often playing a prominent role in both)."

This is well-times since we will have The Folded Clock, a collection of Rühm's number poems – images and text – also translated by Alex Booth back from the printer in September.

Full text on The Complete Review here:
https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/austria/ruhmg.htm

More info on the books here:
https://www.twistedspoon.com/cake-and-prostheses.html
https://www.twistedspoon.com/folded-clock.html