The small press I’d like to mention today is a new one to me. I discovered this press over the weekend while browsing the 2010 Best Translated Book Award Fiction longlist from Three Percent. First of all, there are some really enticing books on this list. I’m trying to figure out how I can order all or at least most of them…my book-buying budget is getting a little out of control this year (okay, just pretend along with me that it was once under control).

Well, the book that brought me to this new press is Landscape with Dog and Other Stories by Ersi Sotiropoulos (trans. Karen Emmerich).

Here is an excerpt from one of the stories:

Let’s just say that Giacometti was setting out to draw a face. If he started with the chin, he would worry that he might never reach the nose. The longer he sketched the face, the harder he tried to offer a faithful representation of it, the more it resembled a skull. The only thing left was the gaze. So what he ended up drawing was a skull with a gaze.

Looks wonderful, doesn’t it?

The publisher who brings us this tempting bit of prose is called clockroot books. Yes, strange name. The rest of their catalog is equally appealing.