Monada

Monada, by French man of letters Gabriel Mourey (1865-1943), is one of the great short story collections of the Decadent Movement. First published in 1894, and here presented for the first time in English, in an excellent translation by Shawn Garrett, the sixteen stories it contains range widely in theme, but are almost all marked by a melancholy mood-of things lost, of things missed. From symbolist fables to bizarre vignettes, from contes cruels to aesthetic reveries, Monada presents the visions of an exceedingly rare talent whose fictional work, until now, has been denied the Anglophone reader. The volume, long and undeservedly forgotten, is certainly worthy of a well-placed position in the Decadent canon.