Susan Daitch Knihy

contributors include: Prize-winning Argentine Luisa Valenzuela, an early exponent of magical realism, who writes about mothers and knives; Argentine poet Carlos Barabrito, who writes about John Cage. New Yorker Liz Swados cartoons. Susan Daitch, who dissects a nightguard's sympathy with robots, Croatian artist Miroslav Nemeth, who describes his childhood in Zagreb in black & white linocuts, Croatian short story writer Gordon Nuhanovic, who becomes a spectacle at the hairdresser's. Also, Croatian poet Tomislav Marijan Bilosnic returns. Among Pacific Northwest writers, David Hapgood travels to Morocco, Jenny Forrester stands up to Colorado bullies, Coleman Stevenson has breakfast, Kassten Alonso goes to a punitive school on a punitive school bus, but learns to type. And there are feuilletons, typewriter collages, poetry from Lithuania, an Australian comic report on a trip to New York... A compendium of the global contemporary. Pan-lingual Gobshite Quarterly, where Paul Krassner meets Vénus Khoury-Ghata, is my favorite source for Hungarian fiction that reads like a song ("Hogy jaj. jaj. jaj. semirol semmi fogalma nines..."). Here English language poems, short stories, and "reasoned rants" nervously traverse a dark alley, past hipster Arabs, dangerous Czechs, Spanish cantoras... - Chris Dodge, Utne Magazine

A gripping narrative unfolds through three interconnected stories, beginning with a forensic sculptor whose life is threatened while reconstructing victims' faces. This leads her to Vienna, where she collaborates with forensic archeologists. The second tale follows an accent coach uncovering dark secrets tied to a censor from WWII as bodies surface near propaganda offices. The final arc introduces a businesswoman who shelters displaced Ottoman women post-battle. Blending political thriller and comic noir, the book explores themes of identity, cultural assimilation, and the refugee crisis.