I Am Kasper Klotz

by Sky Gilbert

In the killer’s own words … If an AIDS virus could talk, what would it say? How would it think? Feel? Would you want to get to know it, up close and personal? I Am Kasper Klotz is the surprising, morbidly funny autobiography that will answer all your questions. Sure, Kasper might be the face of evil, of death, but don’t let that prejudice you:  get to know him. In this, his third novel, Sky Gilbert explores the culture of AIDS, exploring the minds of those whose lives revolve around the virus, the gay men who are running scared, barebacking, taking toxic drugs and raising funds for others similarly afflicted. Is Kasper Klotz an unrepentant serial killer? Or is he redeemable? When he makes the mistake of purposely infecting a beautiful young midwesterner, he’s accused, like a handful of other HIV-positive men in North America, of assault and attempted murder. A woman obsessed with Ayn Rand and her ever-expanding waistline, makes the incarcerated Kasper her mission. A hilarious, politically incorrect rant, I Am Kasper Klotz is a medical-scientific mystery: a thriller about what makes the AIDS virus tick.

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

Reviews

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Sky Gilbert at his most confrontational. Kasper Klotz explains how he ended up in a mental institution after deliberately inflicting a series of gay men he despises with HIV. Gilbert tends to use unreliable narrators through home to vent his frustrations with society and particularly the gay community. Kasper's descriptions of the men he's chosen to infect — a series of hypocritical, self-dramatizing queens — are as blisteringly funny as they are shocking, as is his relationship with a woman who's desperate for some kind of connection and becomes his groupie during the trial. This is not for the easily offended, but the best satire isn't.