Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Exploding with windstorms, floods, stones, tectonic plates, and radioactive disasters, these stories from around the world showcase contemporary literature at its most daring.
A family's heirloom stones unearth a story spanning war, illness, and radioactivity. A pipeline installed to protect a town from flooding results in a howling that disturbs the town's inhabitants. A political prisoner embarks on an epic flight toward freedom, literally blown like a kite in the wind.
Borrowing from eco-literature and mythology, Elemental unflinchingly takes on the earth. A whirlwind of fiction and reportage from Japan, Iran, Germany, Israel, Poland, Madagascar, Norway, and Iraq, this collection explores how earth, wind, water, and fire shape our narratives and alter our existence.
Synopsis
"I too shall expand, literally blossom, together with the surrounding nature."--G hril Gabrielsen, translated by Deborah Dawkin
A family's heirloom stones unearth a story spanning war, illness, and radioactivity. A pipeline installed to protect a town from flooding results in a howling that disturbs the town's inhabitants. A political prisoner embarks on an epic flight toward freedom, literally blown like a kite in the wind.
A whirlwind of fantastic new writing from Japan, Iran, Norway, Germany, Madagascar, Iraq, Poland, and Israel, this collection of fiction and reportage maps the intimate, ongoing relationship between human civilization and the natural world. Do we set the limits on our existence? Or is it wind, water, fire, and earth that define--even control--us? Borrowing from eco-literature and mythology, Elemental unflinchingly takes up the earth.