Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

by Ananda Lima Narrated by Taylor Harvey

Overview

At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life, and she writes him stories about beautiful and impossible things. Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and unsettling linked collection that lures listeners into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil, where they'll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. With a singular voice in the narrative-bending tradition of Kafka, Cortázar, and Bulgakov, Lima speaks to Brazilian-American immigrant experiences-of ambition, fear, heartbreak, and home-with equal parts warmth and agitation. Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a powerful experience: once listened to, you're as much a part of the stories as they're a part of you. The collection includes “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Irreverent and very conscious of form, this is a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction." —The New York Times

"A terrific fiction debut... The stories, and the stories within those stories, connect to some of the cruelest portions of the human experience with uncommon warmth and wit." " —Publishers Weekly, starred review"

"One of the most original and unforgettable reads of the year." —Library Journal, starred review

"Will delight readers crushed under the weight of the contemporary world." —Kirkus, starred review

"Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a creative book for creative people, as much about souls as it is about craft, with one finger expertly on the pulse of the American sociopolitical context. A truly unusual collection; remarkable and memorable, each story containing something meaningful to carry around." —Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

"This collection explores everything from the unique experiences of loss, fear, and disconnection felt by Brazilian immigrants to the U.S. to the frustrating pain of being a writer or photographer in an increasingly corporate, dystopian world." —Booklist

"Here is a collection of stories that not only delights in its ability to subvert the reader’s expectations but also leaves one haunted." —The Kenyon Review

"A perfect balance of humor, heart, and hauntedness.... I expect Craft to immediately put Lima in the company of writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Samanta Schweblin." —Chicago Review of Books (Most Anticipated)

"Formally playful, whimsically supernatural, and darkly witty, poet Lima’s prose debut sucked me in from the first page." —Publisher Weekly (Top 10 Summer Reads)

"A series of surrealist, spooky, sexy tales that are completely unpredictable and utterly fascinating. Using a unique blend of horror and literary weirdness, Lima’s work discusses what it means to belong (or not) in another land, to search for home, and to discover who the devil might really be." —Reactor

“Sexy and absorbing…. Absolutely breathtaking.” —Lightspeed Magazine

"My only problem with this book is the title, and that’s because I love it so much. Ananda Lima didn’t write these stories for the Devil, she wrote them for me! An absolutely thrilling reminder that short stories can be the best kind of magic, conjuring up not only the devil, but real emotion, real surprise, real strangeness.” —Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

“Sophisticated and totally engrossing, Ananda Lima’s Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is easily one of the most innovative works I’ve read in quite some time. Interlocked stories form a cohesive and unique vision in this haunting collection from an astounding new voice.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

"I was blown away by Ananda Lima's Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil. Propulsive, uncanny, and expertly built, Craft unearths truths about fiction writing, the contemporary immigrant experience, and what it means to live a life of art, all in the clean, marvelous prose of a decorated poet." —Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild

“Trippy, eerie, wry, and always profound, Lima achieves what most writers strive for, taking the reader on unexpected but always satisfying journeys while balancing the speculative and the real. Lima’s stories keep you thinking and reading. A gifted poet as well as a fiction writer, she knows how to create worlds that draw you in and leave you wanting more. By every measure, Craft: Stories I Wrote For the Devil, marks a wondrous fictional debut.” —John Keene, National Book Award-winning author of Punks: New and Selected Poems

"The stories in Ananda Lima's incredible collection do something nearly impossible. They open up surreal and strange worlds that somehow resonate within the private spaces of our own hearts. Lima's writing, like the best works of literature, confronts the fear of putting words on the page and transcends that fear to make something truly wondrous." —Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic

"Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a beautiful work of alchemy: strange and familiar, experimental and narrative, topical and timeless, heart wrenching and wickedly funny. No story is without an eye to the larger political world—from Reagan Halloween costumes to Americans dispensed from vending machines—and yet no story forgets the vulnerable human hearts that exist within that world, just trying to survive and care for one another, day after day. These stories weave a world entirely their own and beckon you to stay with the charm of Lima’s devil himself. I would have stayed forever. " —Gwen Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw

"Ananda Lima spins us brilliant, resonant tales of people trying to make it through this absurd life. The stories in Craft amuse, entice, and entrap the reader with their devilish intimacy and beautiful prose." —Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made

"Strange, shocking, and downright satisfying. The slim collection hits above its weight class and does more in less than 200 pages than most books do in double the length." —Debutiful, Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2024

“A wild and surrealistic story collection that pays homage to Kafka and Cortázar, Ananda Lima’s Craft seeks to disrupt reductive understandings of both the immigrant experience and the art and craft of writing." —Restless Book

"Devilish, divine, debut." —Ms. Magazine

"Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is certainly a writer’s book. It has humor, irreverence, thoughtfulness, and intelligence; but most importantly, it has a soul." —Strange Horizons

Library Journal

★ 04/01/2024

DEBUT Poet and translator Lima's (Mother/land) fiction debut is a novel in stories, which "the writer" creates for the devil throughout her life, after sleeping with him at a party. The "stories" are interrupted by unnamed chapters, told by a third-person narrator, who draws readers into the writer's "real" life outside of her fiction, enhancing their connection to the writer's work as well as her obstacles as a Brazilian immigrant, a distant daughter, and an eventual wife. The speculative stories range from weird and chilling (such as "Antropófaga," where the main character eats "tiny Americans" and a work vending machine) to emotionally devastating (such as "Ghost Story," in which the protagonist finds that the ghost of her older self is haunting her mother). However, it is the writer and her interactions with the devil (rendered with both sympathy and healthy fear) throughout her life that add a surreal hue, uniting the entire volume into one of the most original and unforgettable reads of the year. VERDICT A captivating, alluring, and, at times, illicit book that is conscious of the craft of the storytelling process without sacrificing an extraordinary reading experience. It recalls Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward, and Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2024-05-17
Brazil-born Lima explores questions of identity, politics, and creativity through a surrealist lens in these short stories.

The Devil is a recurring figure in Lima’s collection, sometimes appearing as a figure of intrigue, other times as a source of inspiration. In the opening story, "Rapture," the main character is not a writer when she first meets the Devil, “at least not openly so.” And yet, “the Devil had known...the space she had inside her to carry her stories. He had known her hunger.” As if a telepathic confidant, the Devil intuits who the writer is before she herself knows and helps instruct her on how to fulfill her creative vocation. Lima sometimes features characters in the very process of writing, as in “Ghost Story,” in which the narrator “type[s] ‘Ghost Story’ at the top of the page and wonder[s] where to start.” While her characters may not know what should come next, Lima adroitly comments on everything from MFA workshops to Brazilian politics with cheeky aplomb. Though this is not an overtly political book, the specter of neoliberalism in both Brazil and the U.S. hovers on the periphery of many stories. Often, the hellscape of global politics occurs on the television in another room, an ongoing commentary that is ever present, though muted like white noise. The personal becomes political within literary spaces where “sometimes, when the immigrant writer wrote, there was no migration in the story, and she wondered if there should be. Sometimes the immigrant writer wrote immigrant stories and wondered if she shouldn’t. These were the kind of questions she talked about with the Devil.” Who gets to tell certain stories and why? The book’s title evokes both guile and labor, cunning and skill. The dream for Lima’s characters, plagued by global pandemics and wealth disparities, is not health or fame, but writing. Art may not save us from the Devil or hell on earth, but it can come close.

Stories that will delight readers crushed under the weight of the contemporary world.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191746197
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	06/18/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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