The World of Alphonse Allais

Alphonse Allais, Miles Kington

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780571306091
• Edition: 0

In one of his Independent pieces Miles Kington once referred to a volume of Edward Lear's limericks translated into French. Not an easy task, you might think, and in translating Alphonse Allais into English, Miles Kington set himself a similar challenge. He carried it off with panache. As Max Harrison said in The Times, '... has done a difficult job well, even preserving some of Allais's puns'.

Alphonse Allais has been described as the greatest humorous writer ever. In the words of Lisa Appignanesi, 'Allais was a consummate absurdist. From an ordinary phenomenon, simple sentiment or situation, he would logically deduce the looniest, most macabre and most unexpected result ... His humour kept all Paris, high and low, waiting breathlessly for the paper which would carry his next tale ...'

On first publication, in 1976, Clive James in the Observer said 'Allais has been dead 70 years but his mocking tone ensures him a permanently relevant after-life'.

And John Sturrock in the New Statesman, 'Allais stands, along with Jarry, at the head of the most dazzling and highly educated tradition of French humour, as witty as it is whimsical'.

Faber Finds offers this rare book as a tribute not only to Alphonse Allais but also Miles Kington, two great humorists in tandem.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction and a Note on the Translation
• How I became a journalist
• Mothers-in-law are the necessity of invention
• A Christmas story I
• The language of flowers
• Anything they can do …
• Ghost Story
• Lighthouses
• A careful criminal
• St. Peter and his concierge
• The poor bastard and the good fairy
• Animal power
• The failed fiancé
• My world record
• A petition
• The Henri II chest
• In which Captain Cap takes great exception to being made a fool of
• The boy and the eel
• Putting the record straight
• The Imprudential Assurance Company
• The dogs of war
• Romance in the ranks
• God
• A house of mystery
• Freaks
• The Templars
• D’Esparbès’s revenge
• Arfled
• Patriotism on the cheap
• Finis Britanniae
• Finis Britanniae (continued)
• Final thoughts on the floating of England
• Crisis time for England
• It’s love that makes you go round the world
• Keeping up appearances
• Virtue rewarded
• Companies, insurance, infernal cheek of
• The ends justify the means
• P S
• The doctor
• Lionisation
• The Corpse Car
• Captain Cap again
• A stroke of good luck
• A Christmas story II
• The search for the unknown woman
• Absinthe
• The cork
• Littorally
• The beautiful stranger
• M-E-R or The New American Moto-Elevated-Road
• A few ingenious ideas
• Some more ingenious ideas
• A third and final batch of ingenious ideas
• The prevention of cruelty to microbes
• The paper crisis
• Commercial interlude
• Family life
• Sensitivity
• The good painter
• Personal Column
• A tactical error
• Speed reading
• Post Office love
• Comfort
• An unlikely story
• A sad poem translated from the Belgian
• Widow and son
• The polymyth
• A most unusual way to die
• No hurry
• How far can the book publicity people go, always assuming, the way things are going at the moment, that they will ever stop?
• Copyright