Jascha Kessler's

Siren Songs & Classical Illusions

Each of these fifty delightfully wicked "modern fables" contains a shard of mythology at its core, overlaid with the experiences of contemporary life, like an oyster pearling a grain of sand. From smog-laden Los Angeles skies to icy Adirondack streams, from murderous back alleys in Brooklyn to the hot springs of Taos, New Mexico, Jascha Kessler spins ironic tales of revenge and deception, exile and debasement, accident, fate and survival--all turned with the exactitude of a poet by a keen observer of our human foibles. Widely published in magazines, and also gathered here from earlier out-of-print collections, these award-winning stories are, to use Saul Bellow's words, "swift, salty, spare, and first-rate." A sardonic guide to the classical echoes of the tales is specially appended to this new volume of masterful fiction.

From reviews of Jascha Kessler's modern fables:

"A most enjoyable--often moving, often raucous-- reading experience."--Midstream

"The irony is trenchant, the intelligence incisive, the writing stylish."--Publishers Weekly

"The titles, such as 'Dafne,' 'Ikaros,' 'Cheiron,' give the illusion of classical points on our twentieth-century compass rose, and in the illusion lies the irony that gives these stories an extra dimension." --The Short Story Review

"Tinged with a witty cynicism, all are composed in a stylized and captivating prose." --New York Times Book Review

"Each of these fully developed pieces brings alive, if not quite the truth, then at least a situation where it might be found today." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

Jascha Kessler lives in Santa Monica, California. A professor of English at UCLA, he is the author of three collections of poetry and several story collections, as well as being the prize-winning translator of Geza Csath's The Magician's Garden (Penguin), The Selected Poetry of Miklos Radnoti (Ohio U. Press), The Face of Creation (Coffee House Press), and Sandor Rakos' Catalan Games (Marlboro Press). Since receiving the Major Hopward Award in 1952, Mr. Kessler has won three Senior Fulbright Fellowships, an IREX Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. His Classical Illusions won the Shirley Collier Prize, and he is the first American writer to have received a Translation Medal from the Hungarian PEN Club.

Cover painting: Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Paul Cezanne, L'Eternel Feminin, ca. 1877, oil on canvas, 17" x 21". Reproduced by permission.