Book Description
Short story collection
From the Back Cover
"These stories represent the early work of Brian Evenson, a writer of astonishing power. He has been compared to Poe, to Kafka, to other great writers whose vision was bleak and dark, and whose characters act out of appalling despair. Evenson is worth such comparison, but his work is different from these. His worlds are without any emotion at all. Neither cruelty nor pity, happiness nor misery, compassion nor suffering, hope nor despair exist in his tales of inexorable and inhuman logic. They are written too in a faultlessly efficient prose, so that we see these strange worlds in the clearest and coldest of lights. And, paradoxically, we become aware of life without a purpose, of laws without sense, of victims who do not know they are victimised and aggressors who act without aim or malice. Evenson is a moralist, telling us that our very humanity is at risk, and that we must defend it." -- Leslie Norris, winner of the Katherine Mansfield Triennial International Award and author of Sliding and The Girl from Cardigan
About the Author
Brian Evenson's collection of stories, Altmann's Tongue, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1994. In addition, Evenson has published two other works of fiction, One Thick Black Cord and Prophets and Brothers. A novel is forthcoming from Four Walls, Eight Windows. Evenson has lived in Central America and Europe. He currently lives in Oklahoma with his wife and two daughters, where he teaches creative writing and critical theory at Oklahoma State University. Contact him at: evenson@osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu
