arthur nersesian, who created a howling new york odyssey in his smash hit the fuck-up, captures the spirit of the city itself -- jolting and full of surprise -- in this powerful new novel edged with black humor and poignancy.
]]>Orloff Trenchant is a painter who sells books on West 4th Street in Manhattan and is obsessed with mastering his craft. Desperate for cash, Or agrees to take a commission no one else will touch: he has three weeks to carve a headstone for a recently deceased restaurateur -- a Chinese takeout box. As Or attempts to make his deadline, he navigates among a toxic mix of fellow artists, struggling gallery owners, bloodsucking art dealers, his politically active friends, and a haunting addict poet whose life is more out of control than Or's own.
Nersesian's prose is sparkling and hypnotic in this brutal and comic story that will make you wonder if life and art are two different things.
]]>Arthur Nersesian is the bestselling cult author of The Fuck-Up, Chinese Takeout, Manhattan Is a Loverboy and dogrun. The former managing editor of the Portable Lower East Side, he currently lives in New York City.
]]>Dynamic and moving, with trademark Nersesian moments of cutting humor and truth, Unlubricated is a tale of down-and-dirty off-Broadway New York theatre, sex, love, and life in the wake of September 11.
]]>The Swing Voter of Staten Island takes place over the course of a week in November 1981. Uli, suffering from amnesia, finds himself on a mission, but isn't quite sure what it is, who sent him, or even who he is. He ventures across the perilous wilds of New York City, through abandoned neighborhoods and burned-out battlefields. But Uli soon awakens to the awful fact that this isn't New York City at all. He is a key player in a strange, alternate history of both his city and country.
Uli has found himself trapped in New York, Nevada, isolated in the center of an impenetrable desert-where the US military was able to transform one of its "military situation cities" into a temporary refuge center, designed to resemble New York. While battling to make sense of his surroundings, Uli slowly remembers who he is and his own culpability in creating the current situation.
Arthur Nersesian is the author of six novels, including the smash hit The Fuck-Up (MTV/Pocket Books), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic Books), Suicide Casanova (Akashic Books), and dogrun (MTV/Pocket Books). He lives in New York City.
]]>"Award-winning playwright Arthur Nersesian has woven an effective dramatic form through four plays, each quite funny in its own way. Each yields very powerful human results while subtly investigating the major social issues of our time."-Evangelina Borges, Trying Time Press
Nersesian's cult status has grown from the success of his novels, and here for the first time his equal skills as a playwright are revealed to a hungry public. Three of the four plays in East Village Tetralogy have been staged off-Broadway in New York City. The four plays included in this volume are:
Rent Control
East Village Writer's Bloc
Plea Bargains
Spare Change
"Nersesian is a first-rate observer of his native New York."-Publishers Weekly
The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx is the highly anticipated follow-up to The Swing Voter of Staten Island-the first two installments in Arthur Nersesian's series of novels offering an alternate history of New York: The Five Books of Moses.
Robert Moses was responsible for creating contemporary New York's infrastructure, but he did so at the cost of destroying neighborhoods. In this novel, Robert has looted his brother Paul's share of the Moses family fortune, repeatedly blocked his attempts at gaining public office, thwarted his career in the private sector, and set in motion events that decimate Paul's home life.
Paul Moses' deep-seated rage metamorphoses into an act of terrorism committed against his brother and against a city that he once cherished. Although it can be read as a stand-alone novel about Robert and Paul Moses, The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx is also a memory play that follows Uli Sarkisian-the hero of The Swing Voter of Staten Island-en route to solving a massive historical crime, while desperately struggling to escape from becoming another one of its victims.
Arthur Nersesian is the author of eight novels, including the smash hit The Fuck-Up (more than 100,000 copies sold), dogrun, Suicide Casanova (Akashic Books), and, most recently, The Swing Voter of Staten Island, the first volume in The Five Books of Moses series. He lives in New York City.
]]>The Swing Voter of Staten Island takes place over the course of a week in November 1981. Uli, suffering from amnesia, finds himself on a mission, but isn't quite sure what it is, who sent him, or even who he is. He ventures across the perilous wilds of New York City--through abandoned neighborhoods and burned-out battlefields. But Uli soon awakens to the awful fact that this isn't New York City at all. He is a key player in a strange alternate history of both his city and country.
Uli has found himself trapped in New York, Nevada, isolated in the center of an impenetrable desert--where the U.S. military was able to transform one of its "military-situation cities" into a temporary refuge center, designed to resemble New York. While battling to make sense of his surroundings, Uli slowly remembers who he is, and his own culpability in creating the current situation.
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