HUMAN SIDE PRESS

“He knew nothing of loving life; he knew nothing of hating death. He emerged without delight; he went back in without a fuss. He came briskly, he went briskly, and that was all. He didn’t forget where he began; he didn’t try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it; he forgot about it and handed it back again.”

— Chuang Tzu

Press

HSP books are printed and hand bound in Dallas, Texas with materials sourced locally. Produced in limited numbered editions, and often with labor from the authors themselves, these books are made available to the few.

Podcast

Long form conversations on topics ranging from literature and philosophy to anthropology and the question of how one should live.

Projects

Audio and video works produced by HSP and Human Side Press authors.

Catalogue

Night Visitor

TASOS LEIVADITIS

Poetry | 2023, 108 pp, casebound, 5.1 x 8.7 in.

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First published in Greek in 1972, in the middle of a military dictatorship, Tasos Leivaditis’ Night Visitor gives voice to the fears and anxieties of life under brutal authoritarian rule. In 79 compact vignettes or ‘prose-poems’ (a form employed exclusively here for the first time, becoming in the end Leivaditis’ signature style), we are thrown into a world that is grim, dim and death-laden: the streets are deserted, buildings dilapidated, people sickly, defeated and desperate, struggling but unable to connect and communicate, except with the nonexistent (the past, the dead, the imaginary). With escape foreclosed, an ominous darkness descends (nearly all the action takes place at night), and we are gripped by the unsettling awareness that an unpleasant primeval presence is now in control. The titular ‘night visitor’ is no guest or savior, but a phantom-like intruder like the folkloric incubus, haunting and terrifying its victims. Translated and introduced by N N Trakakis and limited to 50 hand bound copies.

“Ambush”

“The Sixth Day”

“The Return”

My Travel Diary

KNUD RASMUSSEN

Anthropology | 2023, 192 pp, casebound, 5.5 x 8.3 in.

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A classic of Danish Arctic exploration literature receiving its first English translation, My Travel Diary (Min Rejsedagbog) is Knud Rasmussen's riveting account of the First Thule Expedition of 1912 and the crossing of the Greenland ice cap. The 1000 kilometer journey, that nearly killed Rasmussen and his men, was called by the Royal Geographic Society "the finest ever performed by dog sled." Mixed in with Rasmussen's recounting of his adventures are philosophical and ethnological observations on the Inuit culture he knew intimately. This edition is limited to 20 books, with each copy containing a unique selection of hand transferred acetone prints from the expedition.

Peter Freuchen

Hunters in the Snow

The Wild Chorus

KNUT HAMSUN

Poetry | 2019, 108 pp, casebound, 6.8 x 9.6 in.

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Translated for the first time into English, The Wild Chorus (Det vilde Kor) was the only book of poetry published by Knut Hamsun (1859-1952). Its publication in 1904 came in the turbulent decade following the success of his novels Hunger and Mysteries. Hounded across Europe by a female stalker, unhappily married and later divorced, drinking heavily and bankrupted by his gambling, Hamsun returned to his childhood home at Hamarøy in the far north of Norway. There he lived alone in a turf hut and composed many of the poems in this collection, inspired by the Arctic summer, the forests, mountains and fjords. The book resulted in a revival of lyric poetry in Norway, with these poems to this day continuing to be read and admired. This hand made edition is casebound in a gold foil debossed cover with a foreword by Knut Hamsun and introduction by the translator. Limited to 60 copies.

Foreword by Knut Hamsun

“In One Hundred Years All Is Forgotten”

“The Skerry”

The Home Depot

PETER DAHLSTRAND

Stories | 2021, 80 pp, casebound, 5.6 x 8.3 in.

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The Home Depot is a series of interconnecting vignettes about the workers on an overnight freight team in a suburb of Chicago. The people in them are real, and the incidents are true. Though vulgar, outrageous and violent, their stories are told with much humor and an absence of self pity. There is pain at the bottom, but also laughter. This casebound edition is hand made and limited to 50 copies.

“Joe”

“Frank 2”

Enchiridion Euthanasiæ

TASOS LEIVADITIS

Poetry | 2021, 108 pp, casebound, 4.8 x 7.4 in.

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This is the first full-length English translation of Tasos Leivaditis’ collection of prose-poems, Enchiridion Euthanasiæ (or Handbook for a Good Death), originally published in Greek in 1979 and awarded that year Greece’s highest honor in poetry, the State Poetry Prize. Leivaditis, born in Athens in 1922, had by the time the book was published experienced the devastation of the German occupation of WWII, quickly followed by an even bloodier civil war, this in turn leading to decades of authoritarian right-wing rule culminating in the military dictatorship of 1967-74. These experiences purged Leivaditis of his youthful idealism but also plunged him into darkness and despair, out of which emerged some of his finest poetry, including the present ‘enchiridion’, an operating manual of sorts, giving us the tools with which to live and die well. Translated with an introduction by N N Trakakis and limited to 75 hand bound copies.

“Afternoon Delights”

“Reminder”

“Perverted Passions”