All One Horse

By Breyten Breytenbach

(Archipelago, 2008)

Written in the mid-1980s and finally seeing their first U.S. publication, these 27 short prose works of fiction by Breyten Breytenbach, South African poet, author, and NYU Global Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, take on the idea of artistic impulse. Many of the pieces are couched as fables, and each is accompanied by a watercolor done by Breytenbach. All the stories have a consistent speaker who muses on such subjects as the poet’s role, God, and artistic fraudulence.
    “Surreal and opaque, Breytenbach’s self-described ‘minor’ squibs on where art comes from,” says Publishers Weekly, “are equal parts violence and whimsy.