The Book of Duels: Flash Fiction

(Paperback)

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In this compact collection, "settling the score" provides a fascinating apparatus for exploring foundational civilizing ideas. Notions of courage, cowardice, and revenge course through Michael Garriga's flash fiction pieces, each one of which captures a duel's decisive moment from three distinct perspectives: opposing accounts from the individual d

Reviews

"Michael Garriga's prose is rich with idiom and tension, taut and visceral as the stories he tells. He writes exclusively of getting even, settling scores, honor, bullying and cowardice. The language has biblical force and rhythms, and he goes inside these characters and brings them to us direct from their deepest parts." --Daniel Woodrell, author of The Maid's Version and Winter's Bone "Lovers of language at its thrumming, pulse-driven peak, fiends for characters staggeringly alive, twitching addicts of images grotesque and glorious, Michael Garriga is your man and The Book of Duels your new obsession. With his Duels, Garriga defies classification, transcends form, and gives us neither prose, poems, or prose-poems, but a work of unassailable linguistic art." --Kent Wascom, author of The Blood of Heaven "Garriga has instantly established himself as both a master of that profoundly modern literary form, the short short story, and a master of the human condition. The Book of Duels is one of the most extraordinary first books of fiction I've ever read." --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain "Michael Garriga's truly original and often darkly funny stories in The Book of Duels are as full of heart and blood and guts as the work of his great heroes, Cormac McCarthy and Barry Hannah, and he shares with those writers a hard-won vulnerability at the word-drunk nub of everything." --Mark Winegardner, author of Crooked River Burning "The Book of Duels is a beautiful, brutal collection, bridging the distance between prose and poetry. Garriga bears down on our legacies of racism, violence, and vengeance--at turns historically precise and otherworldly--creating an acute awareness of our human frailty and relentless desire for love." --Julianna Baggott, author of the Pure Trilogy "There are a lot of great storytellers published today, but it takes a great writer to tell a story in so few words--and Michael Garriga does it brilliantly. Told candidly from the perspective of each duelist and a witness, The Book of Duels delves into the final thoughts--of honor, of love, of hatred, of anger, of God--of those facing death. Gritty, and often darkly humorous, this debut collection will make readers take note of flash fiction." --Lindsay Pingel, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

Author Bio

Michael Garriga holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University's creative writing program. His short fiction has appeared in New Letters, Black Warrior Review, storySouth, Southern Review, and elsewhere. Garriga lives with his family outside of Cleveland, OH, where he teaches creative writing in the English department at Baldwin Wallace Unversity. The Book of Duels is his first book. Tynan Kerr was born in St. Paul, MN. He received a B.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He currently lives in South Minneapolis.