Readers' rating:
Publishes
Jun 18, 2024
192 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry―Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and surreal fiction debut by award-winning author Ananda Lima.
At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.
Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they'll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences–of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.
With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as "singular and wise and fresh" (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
"A terrific fiction debut... The stories, and the stories within those stories, connect to some of the cruelest portions of the human experience with uncommon warmth and wit." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"One of the most original and unforgettable reads of the year." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"A perfect balance of humor, heart, and hauntedness.... I expect Craft to immediately put Lima in the company of writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Samanta Schweblin." ―Chicago Review of Books (Most Anticipated)
"A wild and surrealistic story collection that pays homage to Kafka and Cortázar, Ananda Lima's Craft seeks to disrupt reductive understandings of both the immigrant experience and the art and craft of writing." ―Restless Book
"Here is a collection of stories that not only delights in its ability to subvert the reader's expectations but also leaves one haunted." ―The Kenyon Review
"A series of surrealist, spooky, sexy tales that are completely unpredictable and utterly fascinating. Using a unique blend of horror and literary weirdness, Lima's work discusses what it means to belong (or not) in another land, to search for home, and to discover who the devil might really be." ―Reactor
"My only problem with this book is the title, and that's because I love it so much. Ananda Lima didn't write these stories for the Devil, she wrote them for me! An absolutely thrilling reminder that short stories can be the best kind of magic, conjuring up not only the devil, but real emotion, real surprise, real strangeness." ―Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
"Sophisticated and totally engrossing, Ananda Lima's Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is easily one of the most innovative works I've read in quite some time. Interlocked stories form a cohesive and unique vision in this haunting collection from an astounding new voice." ―Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
"I was blown away by Ananda Lima's Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil. Propulsive, uncanny, and expertly built, Craft unearths truths about fiction writing, the contemporary immigrant experience, and what it means to live a life of art, all in the clean, marvelous prose of a decorated poet." ―Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild
This information about Craft was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer born in Brasília, Brazil, now living in Chicago, IL. She's the author of the poetry collection Mother/land, winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The Common, Witness, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Craft: Stories I wrote for the Devil is her fiction debut.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
