In Clelia Farris'' mind-bending tales, you''ll find captivating characters with elusive identities like Kieser, who longs to transform himself through horrific procedures in "Creative Surgery," or Yuliano (“Secret Enemy”), a man with no aesthetic taste, or Gabola, engaged in the battle of a lifetime against the expropriation of the Little Tuvu Hill. With dry and polished prose, like the stones of her native Sardinia, Clelia Farris takes us on adventures among the ruins of a future marred by climate change ("A Day to Remember") and in a haunting prison inhabited by the enigmatic figure of "Rebecca." Collected and translated into English for the first time, these seven stories represent some of the greatest works from one of Italy''s best science fiction authors.
Born in Cagliari in 1967, Clelia Farris
graduated in psychology with a thesis on epistemology. A favorite
with both readers and experts, she is considered one of Italy''s best
science fiction authors. She won the Fantascienza.com award
with Rupes Recta, the Odyssey award with No Man Is
My Brother, and the Kipple prize with The Weighing
of the Soul. In 2012 she published The Justice of
Isis, set in the same futuristic Egypt of The
Weighing of the Soul. In 2015 she published the novella,
"Creative Surgery," which has been included in the
anthologies, Storie dal domani 2 and Rosarium
Publishing''s Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International
Science Fiction and Fantasy. She was a finalist for the
Urania Mondadori Award 2016 with her story, "Uomini e Necro."
Her stories have also been published Italian and international
magazines such as Robot, Fantasy Magazine, Future Science
Fiction, and Strange Horizons.
Rachel Cordasco has a Ph.D in literary studies and currently works as a developmental editor. She’s written for World Literature Today, Strange Horizons, and Samovar Magazine and also translates Italian SFF.
Jennifer Delare is a full-time Italian-to-English translator.
Industry Reviews
"Farris has the gift of making her wildly imaginative worlds
feel fully lived-in. Readers of literary science fiction will
devour this collection."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Biopunk at its best, complicated and organic and above all
compellingly real."
-Cat Rambo
"Clelia Farris is a discovery! Every story surprised me in
profound, unsettling, and fascinating ways."
-Kij Johnson
"
Creative Surgery by Clelia Farris is not quite like anything
else I've read. Stories feel like memories, and memories appear like the sky seen from the bottom of the ocean. There's
nostalgia and beauty and strangeness. It is glorious."
-Angela Slatter
"Lyrical, sharp, a little disturbing and, above all, clever-
stories that stick in the mind and invigorate the senses."
-Foz Meadows
"By turns charming, pithy, and brutal,
Creative Surgery accomplishes so many things so well you'll hardly realize you're still contemplating certain lines weeks later. Devour this book, and then quote its many eccentric characters to mystify friends. But do read it."
--Strange Horizons