Bebuquin or the Dilettantes of the Miracle

“I am a mirror, a motionless puddle glittering with reflected gaslight. But has a mirror ever mirrored itself?”

Carl Einstein’s Bebuquin (1912) is a modernist eruption — the only novel by one of the twentieth century’s most daring intellectuals. Art critic, anarchist, street fighter, and “prophet of the avant-garde,” Einstein shattered conventions across literature, theory, and politics.

In Bebuquin, his restless protagonist wanders through the “Museum of Cheap Thrills,” where logic disintegrates and scenes fracture into dreamlike collisions. Part hallucination, part philosophical grotesque, the novel refuses narrative order, anticipating Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and even later experiments by Beckett and Burroughs. It remains a radical touchstone in the history of modern literature.

This bilingual edition, translated by Patrick Healy, includes the original German text, a critical introduction, and a detailed chronology of Einstein’s life.

“Einstein had it, he really was at the top.” — Gottfried Benn