Bandel Books Online

For above the door—the only escape from the depths—towered, house-high, the corpses of dead machines, the mass’s terrible playthings when madness broke over Metropolis. Train after train, with empty, thundering cars, all lights blazing, full-powered, had rolled over the tracks, whipped by the mass’s roars, crashing, tangling, piling high, burning, half-melting, still smoldering, a lump of destruction. And a single lamp, unscathed, cast its sharp, acrid beam from the last machine’s steel breast over the chaos.
But Maria knew none of this. She didn’t need to. It was enough that the door, her and the children’s sole savior, remained merciless, unyielding, that at last, with bleeding hands and shoulders, tortured head, and feet numb, she had to yield to the incomprehensible, murderous force.

New uncensored translation by Joe E Bandel. Available as paperback and as epub.

Ruprecht excused himself for the pressing matter, leaving with Jana. Schiereisen darted back to the library, diving into his books. Dust swirled in small clouds. He searched the shelves again. Earlier, behind the hefty Theatrum Europaeum, he’d spotted a slim booklet, the most vital of all. It outshone every weighty Celtic tome. He’d nudged it out slightly to find it later.
It was a manuscript, neatly bound in red leather, adorned with baroque gold-pressed arabesques. The first page held a watercolor view of Vorderschluder Castle, sober but precise. The second bore the title: Singular and Curious Description of the High-Count Moreno’s Castle at Vorderschluder, Particularly of All Hidden Passages, Stairs, Rooms, Secret Doors, and Other Noteworthy Features, Compiled and Brought to Light on the Occasion of His High-Count Grace Louis Juan de Mereus’s Fiftieth Birthday by Adam Zeltelhuber, Count’s Tutor, 1681.

Now available as a paperback or as an epub.

Gwinnie, Gwinnie Briscoe: she was the whole point of this! Andrea would get plenty more letters from her, far more than she’d like—dozens, hundreds. One last drawer—there lay two letters, set apart, from her cousin Jan Olieslagers. She checked the dates: one, from Bermuda, was a year old, the other three years already—from Peking. She picked them up, tore them halfway—then her hand stopped; absently, she slipped the letters into her handbag.
She passed the mirror, glanced at it instinctively, turned away quickly. No, no, she didn’t want to know how she looked now. Just this morning, she had stood here, a good hour, carefully preparing herself, with every art, for Parker Briscoe’s visit. But mirrors—mirrors were everywhere: in the hotel, she could stare at herself for hours, if she wanted to bid farewell to Andrea Woyland, to—herself.

Available as paperback and as epub.

Beloved – never before have I seen my stars shoot across the sky in such wild storms; never before has my soul swept its wings further towards you; never before have my arms stretched out more painfully towards you; never before have I seen the glory that my longing kindles around your head flicker so bloodily as now that you have sunk into the oceans of eternity for me. Beloved! Here are my dreams! Around your feet I wind the wreaths that my heavy happiness has woven – Here is my heart – my heart! I place my heart in your hands!

Available as small hard cover and as epub.

And I felt the meaning of my paintings more clearly and more surely. The landscape unfolded into a deep, profound, enigmatic eye. A white, gleaming giant’s body emerged from the seashore; like a wound, its lustful body welled up out of the dusk, a mystical mouth. The woman emerged from all the frames of my paintings, the strange will of the world, the all-mother, the ruler:
Mylitta, the Babylonian whore who never satisfied a desire, who consigned the favored one to the flames –
Isis, who gave birth to a sun in immaculate conception: no mortal lifted her skirts! Isis, the mother of kings, wife of the lunar bull, the sacred cow, the queen of the whole earth –
Athena, who never saw the darkness of the mother’s womb, born from the light realm of the brain –

Available as a small hard cover and as an epub.

The ice could break at any moment and he could plunge into the abyss with Hanka, but what did he care?
His soul glowed with happiness.
And his soul laughed with happiness that he had finally found this Thule, millions of years away, where, after all the misery of his life, he wanted to drink the cup of happiness and love that the Knights of the Grail had once emptied.
He could not distinguish reality from dream, but suddenly he felt such power and such a sense of self and such faith in himself that it seemed to him as if he too could cross the Red Sea with dry feet like Moses once did, that he could plant mountains and fertilize deserts.
Hanka snuggled ever closer to him with boundless love, the snow sparkled, the lid of the snow coffin began to burst, the ice sheet gave way, but Czerkaski whispered softly:
“This is life – life.”

Available as a small hard cover and as an epub.

In This Valley of Tears

Also available as an epub.

This beautiful short story by Stanislaw Przybyszewski is very haunting and speaks of eternal love and soulmates and the eternal torment of trying to find each other.

Night over the sea! The deep darkens from the black clouds; two stars struggle through the night with pale light and spray glittering frost onto the sea. Red-hot rings of haze grow around two stars; they grow, clump into clouds, the stars go out and curl deep into the sky like volcanic craters.

A lurking silence hovers in the red haze of the sky; but already the craters are opening up and streams of fire shoot down into the water in a spraying rod vibration. For a moment the sea stands in towering flames, throwing its fiery arms fiercely up into the sky, the darkness flees in luminous swathes; but already the wonder dies away, the sky burns up, and on the darkness of the sea two pale stars twinkle like glittering frost.
It happened that night.

This is translated for the first time into English by Joe E Bandel and part of his Przybyszewski series of translations.

Der Orchideengarten Vol 2, No 4 contains the following stories and poems: The Air Column by Ossian Elgstrom; The Locomotive by Leopold Plaichinger; Mischa Strongin’s Seven Trials by Alexander Poljenow; Galvanostegia by Hanns Wohlbold. Translation by Joe E Bandel. Layout and design by John Hirschhorn-Smith. This is the first time these stories have been translated into the English language. Original art is included.

Der Orchideengarten Vol 2, No. 3 contains the following stories and poems: The Ball by Prince Vladimir Odoyevski; The Last Guest by Paul Altheer; The Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe; Ball Night by Karl Hans Strobl. Translation by Joe E. Bandel and layout by John Hirschhorn-Smith. This is the first English translation of this magazine.

The OAK Matrix: Dance of Opposites is truly my Magnum Opus. It represents a long lifetime of searching and stitching threads together. This book is a confession, a dream, a dare. It’s the story of a theory I’ve stitched together over years—a Frankenstein’s patchwork of opposites, love, and the raw pulse of life. I call it the OAK Matrix, a General Unified Field Theory not of cold equations but of warm, breathing truths: that duality—male and female, spirit and matter, chaos and order—isn’t war, but a loving embrace; that our egos and souls grow not in isolation, but through the messy, sacred bonds of relationship; that what we’ve torn apart as opposites can heal us when held as one. Duality of Opposites and Love and not Duality of Opposites and war. Epub version.