Eric Stener Carlson’s short stories navigate dark spaces, intertwining life with death and art. His characters seek enlightenment in music, literature, painting and photography, but they also find darkness—something menacing, magical and obscure. Art is a spirit board allowing them to contact shades from the past, or to discover danger in the shadows. A man keeping vigil at the bedside of his dying lover hears jazz that reminds him of a girl he lost long ago. At a late-night coffee shop, a professor clings to the diary of a dead man, but it fails to give him the protection he’s longing for. A girl wrapped up in the wonders of a book tumbles down the stairs and wakes up in a world beyond her dreams. A refugee paints the last picture the world will ever know. Lyrical and haunting, these twelve stories (ten published here for the first time) explore the tenderness and terrors of life. They invite us to a place where the worlds of the living and the spirits of the lost blend in a seamless new reality. And when the end finally comes, Mother Night is kind. Contents: ‘Author’s Introduction’, ‘Golden Book’, ‘Coffee Shop’, ‘Divining Rod’, ‘Leopard-spotted Scarf’, ‘Corridor’, ‘Bradycardia’, ‘Stray’, ‘Strasse 60, Berlin’, ‘Salt’, ‘Monsieur Machine’, ‘I Loved You at Your Darkest’, ‘The Atelier’.
Author
Eric Stener Carlson (Minnesota, 1969) is an author currently based in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote his first book, "I Remember Julia: Voices of the Disappeared" (Temple University Press, 1996), when he was right out of college. It is based on his work with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team identifying the remains of people killed by the military dictatorship in the 1970s. After working for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, he wrote his second book, "The Pear Tree: Is Torture Ever Justified?" (Clarity Press, 2006), a very personal investigation into the use of torture and its moral consequences. Eric became a novelist with the publication of "The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires" (Tartarus Press, 2009), a surreal, supernatural mystery. He followed this up with the novel, "Muladona" (Tartarus Press, 2016), "Anxiety of Ghosts" (Amazon, 2017) and his first short story collection, "GAS" (Abraxas Press, 2018). He has a number of other novel projects in the works. His short stories and articles have appeared in journals in the US, UK, Argentina and Spain. Eric holds a BA in International Affairs from The American University, an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was also a Fulbright scholar affiliated with the University of Buenos Aires. Eric frequently lectures and is always happy to give talks to book clubs and universities.
