The Other Side

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was one of the major graphic artists of the 20th century who was widely known for his illustrations of writers of the fantastic such as Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gustav Meyrink and Edgar Allan Poe. The Other Side (1908) is his only work of fiction.

In his combination of the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque, in his evocations of dream and nightmare, his creation of an atmosphere of mystery and fear he resembles Mervyn Peake.

Mike Mitchell is one of Dedalus’s editorial directors and is responsible for Dedalus translation programme. His publications include The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy: the Meyrink Years 1890-1932; Harrap’s German Grammar and a study of Peter Hacks.

Mike Mitchell’s translations include the novels of Gustav Meyrink and Herbert Rosendorfer, The Great Bagarozy by Helmut Krausser, Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen and The Road to Darkness by Paul Leppin.

His translation of Letters Back to Ancient China by Herbert Rosendorfer won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck German Translation Prize.

Alfred Kubin

Translated from the German by Mike Mitchell

The demiurge is a hybrid.

Among my school-friends was a strange fellow whose story is well worth rescuing from oblivion. In the pages that follow I have done my best to give a faithful account, as an eyewitness, of at least part of the events connected with the name of Claus Patera.