[Zeynab’s] film asks audience members to change how they view the displaced. But to do this they must change how they view themselves, and they don’t want to. So, they twist in their seats, feeling scrutinized and provoked.
Vague Predictions and Prophecies – Daisuke Shen
In Daisuke Shen’s short story collection . . . characters don’t make choices, exactly. They rebound and ricochet like sentient pinballs, plunged into a psychotic god’s arcade game.
SCHOOL eviscerates post-structural conceits, derides the cult-leader-status of celebrity intellectuals, and denounces the academic pyramid scheme.
The Book of X – Sarah Rose Etter
Etter’s novel is about embodiment, yes, but it is also about mood, about a very specific kind of aloneness. Call it alienation. Call it the surreality of being some body that story cannot capture fully.
Multiple Choice – Alejandro Zambra
Coherence and logic are not inherent to human experience. Life is paratactic. Causality, the root of arguments and anguish, is the product of a rigorous and motivated training.
Beasts You’ll Never See – Nate Liederbach
The stories in BEASTS YOU’LL NEVER SEE are prone to self-vexing. Each narrative dismantles its protagonist, draws and quarters him, splinters him into linguistic abjection.
Martin John – Anakana Schofield
Martin John is not so much a character as a caricature of masculinity, a figure that, though, granted a privileged position in meaning’s labyrinth, is, nevertheless, caught in his own circuit, fumbling with his zipper.