Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 06 Sep 2026

The Other Side by Alfred Kubin

The Other Side was Austrian artist, Alfred Kubin’s (1877 – 1959) only novel. Kubin is almost certainly primarily remembered now as an artist and illustrator who made significant contributions to both the Symbolist and Expressionist movements. He also flirted around the edges of what we now know as Surrealism and all these artistic influences find their way into The Other Side.

Kubin’s novel was first published in 1909 in German but didn’t get an English language translation (by Denver Lindley) and publication until 1969, coupled with his 75 page autobiography. It was written at a time when he’d come to a road-block in his commission to produce drawings for an edition of Gustav Mayrink’s novel, The Golem. Frustrated by seemingly never-ending delays with this project, he decided to use them as illustrations to his own creation and these are what we now find in the English translation.

Great claims are often made for the influence The Other Side had on writers like Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka while comparisons are also frequently drawn between Kubin’s work and the later Mervyn Peake Gormenghast trilogy.

The pervading sense of unreality, of the normal world turned upside-down or so devoid of ‘normality’ that the world takes on a dream-like quality, is probably what draws those comparisons. In fact, Kubin deliberately set out to explore the idea that a Dream Realm could be created. Early in the book, the unnamed narrator receives a visit from a mysterious emissary who is there on behalf of Claus Patera, an old school friend, and explains that he comes with an invitation to ‘emigrate’ to Patera’s newly created Dream Realm, Perle, sited somewhere in Central Asia. Entry to Perle is limited to people explicitly chosen by Patera and the messenger explains the project this way:

“The Dream Realm is a sanctuary for all those who are unhappy with modern civilisation and contains everything necessary to cater for their bodily needs… The only things our people experience are moods or, better, they exist in moods alone… All the Dreamers believe in is the dream, their dream. And these are nurtured and developed, to disrupt them would be unthinkable, would be high treason.”

At first reluctant, the narrator and his wife eventually agree to travel there and, after an arduous journey, they arrive. The entry into Perle marks the start of their entry into a world where nothing seems to make sense and random events begin to disturb both his and his wife’s frame of mind. Money means nothing, workmen turn up unexpectedly to do work they know nothing about, odd deliveries of cheese rinds arrive and are later reclaimed by aggressive soldiers and what seems at first to be a kind of Nirvana begins to look ominously like a nightmare.

It soon becomes clear that Kubin is taking us an unsettling excursion into the unconscious and the dividing line between sanity and insanity is becoming harder and harder to maintain. This is a very mutant version of The Land of Oz but one where the presiding genius specialises in the stuff of terrified dreams.

As the narrator and his wife begin to fall apart, so too does the Dream Realm – Perle is invaded by marauding animals, buildings crumble and rampant decay sets in everywhere. Finally, the Realm is bought crashing down by the mysterious American industrialist who enters the world and is almost certainly symbolic of the cold material rationality of ‘normal’ life.

A good place to end this review is to quote Kubin’s own words about what he was trying to achieve:

“During its composition I achieved the mature realisation that it is not only in the bizarre, exalted or comic moments of our existence that the highest values lie, but that the painful, the indifferent, and the incidental-commonplace contain these same mysteries. This is the principal meaning of the book.”

Paperback copies aren’t hard to find – there’s a nice Penguin Modern Classic or Dedalus European Classic– and they shouldn’t cost you more than £10 at most.

 

Terry Potter

September 2026