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Fiction. A sculptor dying of a mysterious illness leaves the city
behind in order to live out his final days in solitude in a village
somewhere in Eastern Europe. His sole contact is with a deaf-mute
gravedigger named Vojtech, a golem-like figure who delivers the
necessary provisions--when he remembers to show up. A nameless
wanderer traverses the barren streets of an unknown city in search
of his next prey...
In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American
to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his
experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to
create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic
capital city in the Kim Jong Un Era. Anchored by the experience of
his five trips to North Korea and his interactions with citizens
from all walks of life, Jeppesen takes readers behind the
propaganda, showing how the North Korean system actually works in
daily life. He challenges the notion that Pyongyang is merely a
"showcase capital" where everything is staged for the benefit of
foreigners, as well as the idea that Pyongyangites are brainwashed
robots. Jeppesen introduces readers to an array of fascinating
North Koreans, from government ministers with a side hustle in
black market Western products to young people enamored with
American pop culture. With unique personal insight and a rigorous
historical grounding, Jeppesen goes beyond the media cliches,
showing North Koreans in their full complexity. See You Again in
Pyongyang is an essential addition to the literature about one of
the world's most fascinating and mysterious places.
Seven friends in a continuous loop of eternal exile and youth
embark on a road trip to the end of the world. My friends are
merely effigies I keep to remind me of the animal inside my mind.
-from The Suiciders During the first decade of the second
millennium, a group of seven friends-Zach, Lukas, Adam, Matthew,
Peter, Arnold, and Taylor-occupy an indeterminate house in an
unidentified American suburb and replay a continuous loop of
eternal exile and youth. Permanently in their late teens, the seven
young men are as fluid and mutable ciphers, although endowed with
highly reflexive, and wholly generic, internal lives. "Once you
learn how to love, you will also learn how to mutilate it... I want
to feel so free you can't even imagine... Let's get out there and
eat some popsicles. There is work to be done." Eventually, the
group decides to remove themselves from the safe confines of the
house and to embark upon a road trip to the end of the world with
their friend, the Whore, and their pet parrot, Jesus H. Christ. The
Suiciders is their legacy. Chronicling the last days of a religious
cult in rural America, Jeppesen's debut novel Victims was praised
by the Village Voice for its "artfully fractured vision of memory
and escape," and by Punk Planet for its masterful balance of "the
laconic speech of teenagers with philosophical density." In The
Suiciders, Jeppesen ventures beyond any notion of fixed identity.
The result is a dazzling, perversely accurate portrait of American
life in the new century, conveyed as a post-punk nouveau roman.
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