Babel

By: Gabriel Blackwell

Write A Review

Paperback | 26 November 2020

At a Glance

Paperback
128 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.32 x 13.34 x 0.76

Paperback

$27.49

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.87 with

Ships in 5 to 7 business days

A man becomes obsessed with expanding his body, putting on weight and enlarging himself until he swallows his surroundings. Another man is imprisoned by his own reflection, a reflection that spawns countless new reflections without end. And while one man consumes the disembodied essence of his siblings, experiencing memories that aren't actually his, others lose their wives to imaginary gods or grieve the collapse of families that don't even exist.

Part Borges, part Calvino, part Hieronymous Bosch, the eerie fictions of Gabriel Blackwell offer warped reflections of domestic lives in turmoil, relationships on the brink. In these funhouse mirror distortions of identity crises and lovers' disputes, entropy deforms reality and destroys the fragile bonds between people. As would-be parents struggle with the difficulties of conception, stories half-told gestate new stories within a miasma of yet more stories. As children survey the lives of their elders, dwelling on the paths not taken, they find their own identities fracturing into kaleidoscopes of unrealised possibilities.

Reader, be warned: Babel does not stand on solid ground. The abyss will open beneath you and devour your world. Enter at the risk of plunging in, with nothing in the depths to break your fall.

Industry Reviews

Imagine Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolano riding the Coney Island Cyclone, and you have a hint of the pleasures that await in Babel. Gabriel Blackwell's narrators face disappearing family members, vanishing book pages, all in all, the instability of life as they knew it, but in the face of these often comic calamities, the stories resist and subvert neat categories or solutions. Babel is a collection of masterful parables, invented confessions, essays, and convergences for the current moment. Whether a moral about Moreau (as in the island of) and Morel (as in the invention of) or the evaporation of language itself, these stories both critique and illuminate.

Susan Daitch, author of Storytown and L.C.

Babel is a collection of stories full of characters who are both comic and tragic. Its syntax is precise and astounding in the way it builds and unfolds sentence by sentence with a sort of magic one sees in Borges or Nabokov. Gabriel Blackwell is a startlingly original writer and deserves ranking among the great stylists.

Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

Orders over $79.00 qualify for free shipping.

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.