Deception—the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson's most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work: solitude and community, art and life, hove and hate.

This is the first English translation of Masino's most controversial novel that provoked Fascist censorship before its first publication in 1945. Stepping out of her beloved trunk full of bread crumbs, dust, spider webs, books, and ragged funeral ornaments, the young protagonist discovers she must conform to society's expectation of a woman. Through the young woman's struggle, Masino offers a surrealist criticism of Fascism and the rigid notion of womanhood it promoted.

In these surreal and darkly humorous stories from Romanian-born Ifland, the narrator recalls an eccentric family and their polyglot friends and neighbors...surviving together in a space where fable, reality, and State-issued lies are impossible to untangle. In the book's second section the narratives immigrate to the United States, where the skepticism learned in fabulous youth infects and frustrates American attitudes and institutions.