In this Book
- A Brief Alphabet of Torture: Stories
- Book
- 2017
- Published by: The University of Alabama Press
summary
Winner of FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize
An unflinching and riveting meditation on the pain that attends every facet of existence—love and sacrifice and intimacy and beauty—a biography of torture.
Like all of Vi Khi Nao’s acclaimed and award-winning work, A Brief Alphabet of Torture bleeds across many modes and genres—poetry, essay, fiction, drama—and itself almost constitutes a novel of a different kind. Each tale captures the emotional, physical, psychological, political, and artistic concerns that pervade life like breath and which, even when very beautiful, are filled with pain.
These stories are all facets of Nao’s imagination that define the way she views creation, sexuality, violence, and the role of life in an ontological system that relies heavily on cultural, social, and artistic duress. Some stories like “Winter Rose” and “I Love You Me Neither” rise above the boundaries of pain to places of beauty and grace and love, where pain has no place, but make clear how rare such moments appear in life.
An unflinching and riveting meditation on the pain that attends every facet of existence—love and sacrifice and intimacy and beauty—a biography of torture.
Like all of Vi Khi Nao’s acclaimed and award-winning work, A Brief Alphabet of Torture bleeds across many modes and genres—poetry, essay, fiction, drama—and itself almost constitutes a novel of a different kind. Each tale captures the emotional, physical, psychological, political, and artistic concerns that pervade life like breath and which, even when very beautiful, are filled with pain.
These stories are all facets of Nao’s imagination that define the way she views creation, sexuality, violence, and the role of life in an ontological system that relies heavily on cultural, social, and artistic duress. Some stories like “Winter Rose” and “I Love You Me Neither” rise above the boundaries of pain to places of beauty and grace and love, where pain has no place, but make clear how rare such moments appear in life.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-vi
- Thighs of Nymphs
- pp. 3-8
- Doing an Eva Hesse on a Man
- pp. 9-12
- I Love You Me Neither
- pp. 13-16
- The Bald Sparrow
- pp. 17-26
- Suicide Bomber
- pp. 29-30
- A Blanket of Sarcophagi
- pp. 33-34
- In a Sexual Slang
- pp. 35-36
- My Wife’s Ears and Nose
- pp. 37-40
- The Room Is Bare
- pp. 41-42
- The Earth Needs a Little Mouth
- pp. 43-46
- A Brief Alphabet of Torture
- pp. 47-50
- The Myth of Dara Chromosome
- pp. 53-54
- Arrangements
- pp. 55-58
- The Watermelon Body
- pp. 59-66
- Sexual Dogs
- pp. 67-74
- The House of Utensils
- pp. 75-80
- I Ask the Sentence
- pp. 83-84
- Furtive Bras
- pp. 85-94
- Winter Rose
- pp. 95-102
- The Boy and the Mountain
- pp. 105-137
Additional Information
ISBN
9781573668729
Related ISBN(s)
9781573660617
MARC Record
OCLC
974796581
Pages
147
Launched on MUSE
2017-09-13
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2017