The Naked Lunch
William Burrough
SIGNED
William Burrough
SIGNED
€2,750.00
The Olympia Press, 1959
First edition, SIGNED.
This carries a stamped 18NF over the original 1500F price. France adopted the nouveau franc in 1963, so we can assume that this edition didn’t sell until after this point!
CONTACT US at hello@desperateliterature.com for more info or to book a visit!
Out of stock
Categories: Literature, Rare items


€18.00
The President Shop
Literature
In The President Shop, there is no telling what the future really holds in store as the beliefs of the past slowly start to crumble.
“The President Shop is a marvelous, timeless book that sweeps between the personal and the panoramic as it asks, Does every family, or country, contain an axis, around which the rest of it spins? Can you hear the voice of a stone? How clearly can anyone see the past or future? For which tyrannies have we been unwittingly waving flags?” —Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Certain American States
The President, the founder of the Nation, is an old man now, but his young and unifying spirit stands steadfastly at the heart of, Vesna Maric’s debut novel. Images of and tributes to the President are found in all homes in the Nation, procured from stores like the one Ruben and Rosa run. The couple met as partisans, fighting to forge the Nation in the crucible of conflict. But even though their pride shines as brightly as the gilded bust of the President, the younger generation has questioned whether the Nation really has its citizens best interests in mind. Ruben’s brother is actively working to avoid mandatory military service as he pines away for another man, and Ruben and Rosa’s daughter Mona is too busy adjusting to womanhood to get caught up in state-mandated nostalgia. To further exacerbate the family tension, an elderly uncle claims to have invented a machine to see into the future, which he stores in the basement of the family’s apartment building. But there is no telling what the future really holds in store as the beliefs of the past slowly start to crumble.
€18.00
€18.00


€15.00
The Speculative Memoir
A workshop with Micah Perks
Sat 20th June 11h
Events, Literature
Sat 20th June
11h-13h
Max 15 participants
A short-form workshop from award-winning author, Micah Perks!
About the workshop:
How does one tell impossible true stories? Perhaps through a speculative mode, blending fairy tales or ghost stories or horror stories or time travel with autobiography. In this two hour workshop I’ll talk a little about speculative memoir, we’ll read some excerpts by Carmen Maria Machado, Lidia Yuknavitch, Sofia Samatar and/or Sabrina Orah Mark, and do a writing exercise or two to experiment with this exciting genre.
About Micah:
Micah Perks is an award-winning author of five books and many essays and stories. She is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her memoir, Pagan Time, is about growing up in a log cabin on a commune in the wilderness. Her novel, The Wood Between the Worlds, coming out in 2027, is a queer literary speculative novel about the elusive promise of utopia, the rewilding of the natural world, and the uneasy pull between community and solitude, stability and freedom, mothers and daughters. Micah is currently working on a book length essay about care and transformation in the lives of three older women who fell in love with a baby loon on a pond in the wilderness.
Artwork by Katie Lebel
€15.00
€15.00
Sold out


€0.00
Madrid will be their Tomb:
the English language launch
Literature FREE ENTRY 1st December 20h00 Limited Tickets - 30
We're thrilled to host the Madrid launch of 'Madrid will be their Tomb', the English language translation of Elizabeth Duval's first novel!
‘Modest and powerfully beautiful, this is writing which illuminates human mystery and lifts the reader into the air, leaving them on an edge where their convictions tremble and shake.’
—JUAN MANUEL DE PRADA. ABC.
About the book:
Two occupied buildings: one the former headquarters of the NO-DO (a Francoist propaganda outlet) that has been taken over by a small group of fascists, the other the ruins of some abandoned film studios that have been converted into the barracks of a Marxist-Leninist cell. Drifting between these two spaces are Santiago and Ramiro; two characters who, although finding solace in two polarised political groups, cross paths and change each other’s lives. Discursive and devastating, Duval’s first novel is imbued with the same traits as the era she portrays. A sad, passionate, and all too real portrait of an ever more divided world, Duval’s story, in her powerful, shocking, yet considered prose, reminds us of the uncomfortable, but somewhat comforting similarities we may find with the “enemy”.
About the author:
Elizabeth Duval is an author and the spokesperson for Feminism, Equality and LGTBI+ rights for Sumar. In 2020 she published Reina, the first memoir in Spain by a woman from GenZ, as well as Exception, a verse poem. In 2021 she published the essay Después de lo trans and the novel Madrid será la tumba. In 2023 she published Melancolía, a sociopolitical essay on how to recover hope when facing a grim future. She is also a regular contributor for national media outlets like eldiario.es, Público, El País, and La Sexta.
About the translator:
Alice Banks is a translator from Spanish and French based in Madrid. In December 2022, Alice’s translation, Deranged As I Am, by Ali Zamir, was published by Fum d’Estampa Press. When she is not translating, Alice also works as a publisher at Fum d’Estampa Press and an Editorial Assistant for The European Literature Network, where she writes the monthly column, ‘La Española’.
‘A marvellous novel.’ —NADAL SUAU, EL ESPAÑOL.
€0.00


€5,000.00
The Beatles ‘UP-TO-DATE’
Signed by John Lennon
GIFTS, Literature, Rare items
THE BEATLES UP-TO-DATE
1964
This particular copy has a lovely story.
Originally signed to Maria Pilar, whose signature appears above John Lennon's, during the one and only concert played by The Beatles in Madrid, in 1965.
Kept by Maria until being passed along via family where it finally made it's way into our hands!
CONTACT US at hello@desperateliterature.com for more info or to book a visit!
€5,000.00
Kept by Maria until being passed along via family where it finally made it's way into our hands!
CONTACT US at hello@desperateliterature.com for more info or to book a visit!
€5,000.00

