Kirjahaku

A harrowing, intense, powerful new novel that reads like a classic, from one of the great writers of his generation. Nineteen battles his way into the pros, becomes the quarterback, becomes the myth. Marries the owner's daughter, touches greatness few will ever dream of, retires into what he assumes will be the promised afterlife of days on the golf course, celebrity endorsements, and cushy real estate investments. But markets tank, family disintegrates, fame fades, and the holes in his mind and memory from a career of punishment on the field become too large and frightening to ignore. When he hears of a miracle brain damage treatment forbidden in the U.S., he travels to the Mosquito Coast of Honduras in search of a chance to restore himself to the man he was. Instead, he finds himself on a journey that plunges him into a darkness more violent and horrific than he could have possibly imagined--at once a fight for his life and to hold onto the shards and fragments of the life he's fighting for. A sports saga, sprawling thriller, and existential reckoning with the rot at the core of the west, told by an unheralded, singular master, Pure Life is a daring, complex, and brutal confrontation with and demolition of our modern myths in the most primal of settings--one as perilous as it is imperiled.

A spare and chilling account of the day-to-day experience of Sloper, a janitor in a big-city office building. Waste explores the import of the discarded--for those who generate it, those who dispose of it, and those who are themselves discarded From the humble prospect of his station, Sloper uncovers ominous possibility in lives he barely brushes, allowing Marten in this "stark little masterpiece" to recover language, story and terror from the banality of a throw-away world. Praise for Waste: "Only Eugene Marten can keep a reader enthralled with the minutiae of a janitorial existence. From the most unlikely of subjects Marten constructs, with great care and taking joy in every sentence, a spellbinding work. Precisely and exquisitely detailed, Waste is a stark little masterpiece." Brian Evenson "There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's prose. Waste is an exhilarating and unnerving piece of fiction." Sam Lipsyte "When a poet pal had put a copy of Waste into my hands, I right away went nuts until I had gotten myself in touch with its author to add to my household a supply of enough copies to scare all my writer friends with. Here, said I, in wild proclamation, is one for history and a half." Gordon Lish "This is surely one of the darkest and most jarring books I've read. It is also pitch-perfect. Waste wastes nothing not a syllable, a beat, a ragged breath." Dawn Raffel

"To borrow Rakim's words, this book is 'a sack of dynamite, powerful and bright.' It's a grimly exciting report of the street-level world, a lyric highway story that pops with real American voices and roars with an underground river of criminal menace, a strange captivating work of the imagination, original and great." --Atticus Lish"Firework is about the gorgeous plasticity of the American language. It's about motiveless malevolence and the human want to flee. It's about Jelonnek, and there isn't any figuring Jelonnek. He's a prisoner and a security guard, a good Samaritan and a creep. Jelonnek will never leave you. Lucky you, lucky us, to have his wild tale in our hands." --Noy Holland"There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's prose." --Sam Lipsyte"An explosive road novel." -Vanity FairFirework is the story of a man who, though ill-equipped to help himself, attempts to help someone else, and the beautifully rendered, perhaps necessary catastrophe that results. Unequaled in intensity and often blackly humorous, it is also an exhilarating expression of the all too human impulse to become more than what we seem to be.Eugene Marten is the author of In the Blind, Waste, and Layman's Report.

In this powerful look at the underside of life in an unnamed city on one of the Great Lakes, a young man who has recently been released from a six-year stint in prison finds employment in a Syrian-owned locksmith shop. What unfolds is a riveting account of a man's quest to reinvent himself, to find grace, family and community in a sordid, decaying world. It is also a beautifully crafted crime novel marked by indelible observations, mysterious obsessions and an appreciation of the techniques, tools and hazards of a locksmith's life. A great book' - Gordon Lish'