Surrealist and bizarre contemporary literature

[NocturnalLibrary]

Recently I'm trying to get inspiration back into recording my own material by investigating good books to read and remembered my interest in surrealist art. There's plenty of old visual surrealist art and literature but I'm now looking for more contemporary fiction that has strong surreal and bizarre overtones in its imagery, structure and storytelling to get inspired. Looking for recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

[Atrophist]

The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison. If that's to your liking, try also Signs of Life and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. He also has a new novel out, published just this month, titled The End of Everything.

Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled is typically described as a surrealist novel. But it's a very challenging read, at nearly 600 pages with very little happening on the surface of it.

If comics ("graphic novels" if we must) are okay, check out Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes and The Hole by Charles Burns.