The guiding concept behind The Book of Tongues is the impossible. In it, founding editor-at-large Rustum Kozain undertakes a journey through illusion and disillusion, secret desire and the wilderness of the imagination that includes a detour into landscape, encounter, memory, and history – among other diversions. Part philosophical prank, part fantasy parable, part meta-textual myth and part wishful thinking, itís a personal quest that ultimately seeks to find the correct distance between the eyes and the book.

Photograph: Christine Fourie and Kwela Books

PEOPLE

Rustum Kozain

FAMILY TREE

• H. P. Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon (1924)
• Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliard (1961)
• Utto Rudolph aka Yambo Ouologuem’s Mille et une bibles du sexe (1969)
• Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Sand (1975)
• Ishmael Reed’s Neo-Hoodoo Manifesto (1969)
• Robert BolaÒo’s Literatura Nazi en America (Nazi Literature in the Americas) (1996)
• James Sey’s “Compendium of Imaginary Wavelengths” (2004)

RE/SOURCES

• Rustum Kozain biography
• Rustum Kozain’s blog
• Poems by Rustum Kozain
• Rustum Kozain on Poetry International

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