Ranging from the seventeenth century to our current moment, and crossing multiple continents, Counternarratives' stories and novellas draw upon memoirs, newspaper accounts, detective stories, interrogation transcripts, and speculative fiction to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present. 'An Outtake' chronicles an escaped slave's take on liberty and the American Revolution; 'The Strange History of Our Lady of the Sorrows' presents a bizarre series of events that unfold in a nineteenth-century Kentucky convent; 'The Aeronauts' soars between bustling Philadelphia, still-rustic Washington, and the theatre of the US Civil War; 'Rivers' presents a free Jim meeting up decades later with his former raftmate Huckleberry Finn; and in 'Acrobatique', the subject of a famous Edgar Degas painting talks back.

About the Author

John R. Keene was born in St. Louis in 1965. He graduated from the St. Louis Priory School, Harvard College, and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. In 1989, Mr. Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a Seducer. Keene is the recipient of many awards and fellowships - including a MacArthur Genius Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Whiting Foundation Prize for fiction. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.

Reviews

'We have become accustomed in recent years to the revisionary spirit of much postcolonial fiction, but the ambition, erudition and epic sweep of John Keene's remarkable new collection of stories, travelling from the beginnings of modernity to modernism, place it in a class of its own.'
- Kate Webb, TLS

'Counternarratives is that rare book of short fiction with an epic intuition of time, accomplishing in a handful of inspired, intimate portraits what many sagas only manage in reams.'
- Julian Lucas, New York Times

'Keene's collection of short and longer historical fictions are formally varied, mould-breaking, and deeply political. He's a radical artist working in the most conservative genres, and any search for innovation in this year's US fiction should start here.'
- Christian Lorentzen, Vulture

'Exquisite, and unlike anything I've ever read.'
- Eula Biss, author of On Immunity

'Genius - brilliant, polished and of considerable depth.'
- Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo

'Counternarratives is an extraordinary work of literature. John Keene is a dense, intricate, and magnificent writer.'
- Christine Smallwood, Harper's

'In Counternarratives, John Keene undertakes a kind of literary counterarchaeology, a series of fictions that challenge our notion of what constitutes "real" or "accurate" history. His writing is at turns playful and erudite, lyric and coldly diagnostic, but always completely absorbing. Counternarratives could easily be compared to Borges or Bolano, Calvino or Kis.'
- Jess Row, author of Your Face in Mine

'Encompassing hundreds of fictional and historical characters over several centuries, and utilizing a mesmerizing array of styles - including slave narrative, historical document, stream of consciousness, fever dream, diary, field manual, concrete poetry - the book amasses a vision of epic capacity. In magic-like language, explores the experiences of rebel slaves and slave women, Langston Hughes and Huck Finn.'
- Blake Butler, VICE

Awards
Winner of Republic of Consciousness Prize 2017.



Book Information
ISBN 9781910695135
Author John Keene
Format Paperback
Page Count 400
Imprint Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions