Met the author at the just-concluded AWP Book Fair, and it was grand. Turns out he read self’s short stories in college. (Therefore, self is old. Now her secret’s out!!!! LOL)
Seriously, it was exciting. He even mentioned a book report he did on self’s work. And his teacher was DIANA ABU-JABER.
From the back cover:
- Professor Francis Kauffman has unwittingly landed himself in prison where he’s faced with an insurmountable task: execute a fellow inmate. Charged with igniting a political insurrection among his students at a university in Beijing, Kauffman is sent to the notorious Kun Chong Prison, where his existence grows stranger by the hour as he struggles with the weight of his imprisonment and his incurable need to write about it in a place where art is forbidden, and the inmates must act as executioner.
Opening sentence of this (dystopian) novel:
- “I don’t know why we don’t eat with the other prisoners on the first floor.”
Wow, Ted! Very cool opening!
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 