Fragments from a Found Notebook

Fiction. Translated by Christina Tudor-Sideri. The late Mihail Sebastian's brief 1932 book available in English for the first time.One November evening (in circumstances that would take too long to narrate here) I found in Paris, on the Mirabeau Bridge, a notebook with black, glossy, oilcloth covers, like the ones in which grocers used to keep accounts. There were exactly 126 pages--commercial paper--filled with small writing, streamlined, without erasures. A curious reading, tiring in places, obscure passages, notations that appeared foreign to me, in fact even absolutely contrasting.--Mihail Sebastian