false 19555332 6556 610041 1594489416 9781594489419 17 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187271513m/610041.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187271513s/610041.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/610041.Shining_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Sea 3.50 36
In this stylistic tour de force, Stephen Marche creates the entire culture of a place called Sanjania-its national symbols, political movements, folk heroes, a group of writers dubbed "fictioneers," a national airline called Sanjair, and a rich literary history.

Sanjania is an island nation whose English-speaking citizens draw upon the English, American, Australian, and Canadian literary traditions. This brilliant story is an anthology, taking the reader from the rough and tumble pamphlets of 1870s Sanjania to the burgeoning Sanjanian nationalistic awareness in the 1930s literary journal, The Real Story, to the extraordinary longing of the writings of the Sanjanian Diaspora. These works develop into a Rashomon-like story, introducing us to illustrious Sanjanian figures such as the repentant prostitute Pigeon Blackhat and the magically talented couple Caesar and Endurance.

The result is a vibrant evocation of a country-from the birth pangs of its first settlers and their hardy vernacular to its revolutionary years and all the way to the present-all told in Stephen Marche's innovative and accomplished writing.]]> 330491 3.48 102 30 2007 5 0 false Sun May 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 05 20:14:28 -0700 2008 Sun May 04 16:08:13 -0700 2008 Possession, another work of alternate literary history, this time an anthology of literature from an imaginary North Atlantic island country called Sanjania (Sanjan Island before that, Saint John Island sometime when the first Europeans stumbled upon it). Because so few people seem to...more...]]>