Souvenirs
stories
by Andrew Colarusso and Karen An-hwei Lee
A collection of visions shared across cyberspace, Souvenirs, a collaboration between authors Andrew Colarusso and Karen An-hwei Lee, celebrates fragments from the literary afterlife. In Souvenirs, a philosophically astute, poetically searing collection of miniature fictions and contemporary fables, objects take on shapes of their own designs creating a composite map to a world populated with little transparent souls and ghost ships in lost bottles; a menagerie of curios; photophores of bioluminescence humming in the depths: light begetting light, deep calling to deep. In these twenty-seven prose gems, it seems that Colarusso and Lee are writing from a single mind as they strike a balance between humor and philosophy; the acute and the everlasting. The ideas they discuss—religion, faith, universality, continuance—are large, but their prose is accessible, and at times outright hilarious. Strange, compelling, and arcane considerations of watches, jade, seaweed, and cake, among many other items, come through with stylistic prowess and earnest, intelligent considerations. Souvenirs adds complexity to the mundane, re-centers the iconic, and gifts the reader with nothing short of astonishment; wonder baked into each delicious slice.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Andrew E. Colarusso is author of The Sovereign (Dalkey Archive Press, 2017) and Creance; or, Comest Thou Cosmic Nazarite (Northwestern University Press). He was editor in chief of The Broome Street Review from 2009 to 2017. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012), Ardor (Tupelo 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande 2004), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. She authored two novels, Sonata in K (Ellipsis 2017) and The Maze of Transparencies (Ellipsis 2019). Lee’s translations of Li Qingzhao’s writing, Doubled Radiance: Poetry & Prose of Li Qingzhao, is the first volume in English to collect Li’s work in both genres (Singing Bone 2018). Her book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora: Literary Transnationalism and Translingual Migrations (Cambria 2013), was selected for the Cambria Sinophone World Series. She currently lives in greater Chicago.
PRAISE FOR SOUVENIRS
“Some are whimsical, fabulist fictions; others riff on faith and the afterlife. Whatever approach they take, the entries are unexpected and inventive. The stories cut across time, death, and universes.”
“More than almost any book I could name, Souvenirs possesses the virtue of re-readability. Its stories move so delightfully and surprisingly, and with such curious effects, that they provoke not only a first look but an immediate second. Before too long, I suspect, they will inspire yet another. The truth is that even while I was staring at them, they refused to stay still. I bet they’re stirring again right now.”
“Souvenirs puts ancient human questions into insect algorithms and measures distances between us on vector watches: “As we wait for a maelstrom, some angels stir the pool…” Colarusso and Lee are these angels, stirring up language, objects, reflections, and conversations in a delightful, shifting new world.”
“Spectral, liminal, cerebral, Souvenirs is a marvelous prose object, a Rilkean memento vivere of speculative fictions deftly, lyrically depicting worlds of words where subjects are objects, presences are absences, where dreams body and words cloud, all of the above also fantastically vice-versaed. Luminous and tenebrous, equal parts Renee Gladman and Jeff VanderMeer, Souvenirs is a field guide to nowhere, to beyond the deep dark, the end of the beginning, that is, to the untethered imagination. Read it and be unboxed!”
“A mystical archive, at once whimsical and grave, these dark charms conjured by two contemporary Scheherazades, attempting to forestall world’s end, and in communion with the saints: Borges, Calvino, and so many others, linger in the mind. Recalled in a variety of registers, these traces—souvenirs of the dissolving world—so hard to hold—haunt and fill us with longing.”
“These twenty-seven pyrocumulonimbus collaborative clouds of Karen An-hwei Lee and Andrew Colarusso move like luminescent, bewildered sea creatures through the “toxic ash” of cyber sea time. They hover like rainwater and clutter our hearts like goose feather. It’s a collection born from two amphoral voices. Their union designed to be a “vertical flight” into the unknown and a ‘rafflesia, the fabulous corpse flower the same height as a little girl.'”
Souvenirs in the news:
- starred review in Foreword Reviews (March/April 2022)
Book Details
Title: Souvenirs
Author: Andrew Colarusso & Karen An-hwei Lee
Publication Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-936097-41-8
$14.95
Dist. by Publishers Group West
www.pgw.com, 800-788-2123
Available at your favorite local bookstore, on indiebound.org, bookshop.org, or from Baobab Press affiliate Sundance Books and Music
