This edition presents the novel "The Quays" and the short story collection "On the Transformation of Forms" by Andrei Gelianoff, author of "The Garden Where the Centaurs Live," a finalist for the Andrei Bely Prize.

"The Quays." Artist Edward Hopper seeks to find the ultimate meaning of art. Poet Fernando Pessoa strives to awaken beyond the dreams of reality and history. Through the action of an occult device, their consciousnesses intertwine and they visit the paintings of Charles Sims and Richard Dadd, the clinic of Austrian criminologist Hans Gross, the laughter of fire sparks, a never-found text by William Hope Hodgson, and even Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique." The author turns to the art of the early 20th century not for fun or playfulness, but in an attempt to find a new way to express the elusive. Thus, the Machine of Secrets presents us with its astonishing performance.

"On the Transformation of Forms." Metamorphoses have always been the key to the spiritual path—they are the only true mystery. The stories in this collection explore metamorphoses at their own level of understanding: from the story of Ovid's author in Metamorphoses, through the development of characters through occult rebirth; through the encounter and adaptation of world cultures; at the level of form and the changing settings of the text itself; and finally, to the irreversible metamorphoses of the body in self-deconstructing body horror.