Aseroë, the mushroom, as object of fascination. First observed in Tasmania and South Africa, it appeared suddenly in France in 1920, at which time it was believed by some to be used for witchcraft and even sabotage. It is characterized by its stench and, at maturity, its grotesque beauty. Aseroë, the word, as incantation. Can a word create a world? It does, here. François Dominique is a conjurer, who through verbal sorcery unleashes the full generative force of language, while evoking the essential rupture between the word and the object. An impossible endeavor, perhaps, but one at the very heart of literature. The narrator of Aseroë wanders medieval streets and dense forests, portrait galleries and rare bookshops. As he explores the frontiers of language, the boundaries of science, art, and alchemy melt away, and the mundane is overtaken by the bizarre. Inhabited by creatures born in darkness, both terrible and alluring, Aseroë is ultimately a meditation on memory and forgetting, creation and oblivion.