The Unnamed Press – serie

Nem was not like his college classmates. Instead of crowding around a TV set, Nem opted for lonely walks where he could indulge his passion for photography, until the night he saw Nicholas, a young professor from London, with another male student. The affair is passionate and brief. When Nicholas returns to London, Nem must move on. He graduates and soon finds success as a critic in New Delhi's burgeoning art world. Then comes an invitation to speak to artists in London, and the past is suddenly resurrected. As London's cosmopolitan art scene envelops Nem, he is haunted by the possibilities of a life with Nicholas. But Nicholas eludes Nem, avoiding a reunion with his old student, but leaving clues that lead to someone else: Myra, a woman Nem thought was Nicholas's sister. Brought together by their love for Nicholas, Nem and Myra embark on a surprising friendship. Janice Pariat explores the concept of emotional memory with the inquisitive mind of a scientist and the prowess of a poet. Rich, immersive prose drives a story with international scope, one that seeks answers to the age-old mystery of what binds us to others, and how we can ever let them go.

"Espinoza's book stands out as a beacon for future queer writers, thinkers, and activists. Reading these accounts, I felt myself drawn into a past both wonderful and strange, a world I hope we will continue to celebrate and preserve." —Garrard ConleyAcclaimed author Alex Espinoza takes readers on an uncensored journey through the underground, to reveal the timeless art of cruising. Combining historical research and oral history with his own personal experience, Espinoza examines the political and cultural forces behind this radical pastime. From Greek antiquity to the notorious Molly houses of 18th century England, the raucous 1970s to the algorithms of Grindr, Oscar Wilde to George Michael, cruising remains at once a reclamation of public space and the creation of its own unique locale—one in which men of all races and classes interact, even in the shadow of repressive governments. In Uganda and Russia, we meet activists for whom cruising can be a matter of life and death; while in the West he shows how cruising circumvents the inequalities and abuses of power that plague heterosexual encounters. Ultimately, Espinoza illustrates how cruising functions as a powerful rebuke to patriarchy and capitalism—unless you are cruising the department store restroom, of course.

"Florence Satine and Buenaventura Escobar live and die by the luck of the draw from the Scrabble tile bag in Tunnard’s delightful debut." —Publishers Weekly In an alternate 90s where Scrabble (not poker) is a global sensation broadcast live on ESPN, former world champs Florence Satine and Buenaventura Escobar meet deep in Argentina’s Tigre Delta for one final game. The words they play spell out how they ended up here, and why they are probably going to die. By 1996, Scrabble is big business. The once innocent game has gone pro, becoming the third-most televised “sport” in the world, and earning its major players fame, fortune and corporate sponsorships. The league, however, is tightly controlled by a Scrabble mafia (e.g., The Scrafia) and is suffering from a scourge of corruption, match-fixing, and most disturbingly, the mysterious disappearances of problematic players. When Florence and Buenaventura defy the sinister Scrafia, they recall the unlikely obsession that dominated their lives: a tumultuous romance…with a game. This is the story of a Scrabble reality that never was, but should have been. A bilingual, lexicographical romp across the world, Escapes raises the stakes with each new letter placed upon the rack.

"Hossain’s giddy new novel, another inventive blend of mythology and cyberpunk gizmology... puts a clever spin on both high fantasy and hard science tropes as ancient djinns wield futuristic technology to go head-to-head with humans empowered with their own technowizardry. Fans of both genres will find this an enjoyable romp." ―Publishers Weekly Welcome to Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2089. A city notorious for its extreme population density has found an unexpected way to not just survive a global climate apocalypse, but thrive: pump enough biological nanotech into the neighborhood and all of the bodies together form a self-sustaining, and even temperate, microclimate. Of course, this means that millions of humans have to stay put in order to maintain a livable temperature, and people are getting restless. All of the nanotech has also led to some surprises: certain people no longer need food or water while others can live without functioning organs. So the mercenary Djibrel has to carry a machete wherever he goes. Only a swift beheading can ensure the job gets done anymore. Djibrel navigates the crowded streets, humans teeming with genetic mutations, looking for answers about what happened to the Djinn, a magical super race of genies who seem to have disappeared, or merged, with humans for survival. What Djibrel doesn’t know is that his every move is being tracked by the infamous Cyber Mage—better known to his parents as Murzak, a privileged snarky teenager who regularly works for a Russian crime syndicate with a band of elite hackers, like his best friend ReGi, who resides in North Africa’s FEZ (Free Economic Zone). Respected and feared online, Murzak is about to embark on one of his biggest challenges: attending high school IRL. But when he discovers a brand new type of AI, operating on a dark web from the abandoned Kingdom of Bahrain that he thought was just an urban myth, Murzak and Djibrel will have to face the unimaginable in an already inconceivable world. In this laugh-out-loud-funny and totally original new novel, Saad Z. Hossain continues his signature genre mashup of SF and fantasy, challenging and subverting everything previously imagined about our future and climate change. A scathing critique of corporate greed, Hossain shows us how to think beyond the naïve ideas of preening moguls like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

One of BuzzFeed's New Books You'll Love“Cairo Circles is a novel that proves literature needn’t choose between pleasure and substance. You will tear through the pages of this delicious book, and you will be changed in the process. Doma Mahmoud is a tremendous writer.” —Jonathan Safran FoerSherif “Sheero” Abdallah is an NYU student reveling in independence, free from the judgmental gaze of his conservative family in Egypt to indulge in all sorts of pleasures. When the FBI comes knocking on his door, he’s convinced it’s a case of mistaken identity—until they show him a picture of his cousin Amir. Amir has perpetrated a horrific attack and Sheero is suddenly forced to return to Cairo and confront the events that led to their wildly different circumstances. While Amir wore Sheero’s hand-me-downs and suffered at the hands of neglectful, abusive parents, Sheero attended Cairo’s most prestigious high school, where he and his best friend Taymour, the son of one of Cairo’s business moguls, could enjoy sports clubs, beach vacations, high-end dining, and socializing with girls from the French and British schools. Once inseparable cousins, Sheero and Amir grew further apart, Amir ultimately having more in common with the children of Taymour’s housekeeper: Omar, Mustafa, and Zeina.In Cairo Circles, the lives of this unforgettable group of six young Egyptians intertwine dramatically over the course of over a decade, revealing complex relationships dominated by faith, tradition, social class, and the boundaries of personal freedom. An epic, multi-perspective page-turner, Doma Mahmoud's debut introduces readers to a bold and inventive new voice in fiction as Cairo's streets burst to life on the page.

As China's economy booms, so do its corporations, but none are as successful as the Bashful Goose Snack Company. Founded by Papa Hui, the company is a national treasure, as is his inspiration and beloved pet: the goose. Papa Hui's daughter, Kelly, isn't quite as adored, but she has a new and exciting post in her dad's company: head of the corporate responsibility department. There she is tasked with helping solve the obesity problem plaguing the country's children. Kelly founds a "fat camp," where a series of gruesome accidents take place. While Kelly fears for her job, the government views the project as a success -- the province is no longer the nation's leader in childhood obesity. Kelly returns to the city where she meets hair tycoon Wang Xilai, and we are introduced to the grotesque life of a modern day Gatsby. When Papa Hui is brutally murdered, chaos ensues. Wang Xilai's muse Lulu flees to a hipster idyll, and she is soon joined at the oasis for millionaires by an insane Wang and desperate Kelly. Out of the absurdist satirical tradition of Mo Yan comes a hard-hitting yet whimsical portrayal of China's new "tycoon culture."

What if the end of man is not caused by some cataclysmic event, but by the nature of humans themselves? In Age of Blight, a young scientist's harsh and unnecessary experiments on monkeys are recorded for posterity; children are replaced by their doppelgangers, which emerge like flowers in their backyards; and two men standing on opposing cliff faces bear witness to each other's terrifying ends. Age of Blight explores a kind of post-future, in which the human race is finally abandoned to the end of its history. Muslim's poetic vignettes explore the nature of dystopia itself, often to darkly humorous effect, as when the spirit of Laika (the Russian space dog that perished on Sputnik 2) tries to befriend a satellite, or when Beth, the narrator's older sister, returns from the dead. The collection is illustrated throughout by the charcoal drawings of RISD artist Alessandra Hogan. In haunting and precise prose, Kristine Ong Muslim posits that humanity's downfall will be both easily preventable and terrifyingly inevitable, for it depends on only one thing: human nature.

Broke and homeless at 30, Kelly Enright flees Arizona. Returning to her hometown of Portland, ME, her only plan is to track down her estranged but well-off father. But her twin brother, Max, is living in their deceased mother's home, and if anyone's more screwed up than Kelly, it's disheveled, misanthropic Max. Max has just one obsession: film. In particular, his own unfinished project from a decade earlier, which he believes is a masterpiece in the making. He dreams of completing it, but there's a major problem: Evelyn, his actress and muse, has recently disappeared. After seeing her name in the credits of a famous cult film shot in their hometown, Max thinks Evelyn's disappearance has something to do with the film, and an upcoming festival devoted to it. Kelly's arrival upsets Max's plans for finding Evelyn. Enter Penelope Hayward, the film's star and Kelly's high school best friend. Now a major Hollywood star, Penelope arrives in Portland as the festival's guest of honor. As Max's search for his lost leading lady becomes increasingly, absurdly self-destructive, Kelly must help her brother, who has never recovered from their mother's death.

When Jamie Paddock learns of his father's suicide, memories of his childhood in West Virginia come roaring back. One of the few people in his town to ever make it out, Jamie's living in New York City now, developing marketing videos for YouTube, struggling to write and partying a lot -- all while suppressing the accent that gives him away. Spurred by an artistic curiosity surrounding his silent and private father, Jamie goes home, staying with his disabled mother and sister in their trailer, conveniently located between two Walmarts. Always poorer than the local coal miners, Jamie's family relies on welfare, but it is the mystery of his father's suicide that will help define Jamie's identity and possibly decide whether he leaves West Virginia for good.

From the author of the cult classic Escape from Baghdad!, comes one of The Guardian's Best Fantasy Books of the YearIndelbed is a lonely kid living in a crumbling mansion in the super dense, super chaotic third world capital Of Bangladesh. His father, Dr. Kaikobad, is the black sheep of their clan, the once illustrious Khan Rahman family. A drunken loutish widower, he refuses to allow Indelbed go to school, and the only thing Indelbed knows about his mother is the official cause of her early demise: "Death by Indelbed."But When Dr. Kaikobad falls into a supernatural coma, Indelbed and his older cousin, the wise-cracking slacker Rais, learn that Indelbed's dad was in fact a magician—and a trusted emissary to the djinn world. And the Djinns, as it turns out, are displeased. A "hunt" has been announced, and ten year-old Indelbed is the prey. Still reeling from the fact that genies actually exist, Indelbed finds himself on the run. Soon, the boys are at the center of a great Diinn controversy, one tied to the continuing fallout from an ancient war, with ramifications for the future of life as we know it.Saad Z. Hosscin updates the supernatural creatures Of Arabian mythology—a superior but by no means perfect species pushed to the brink by the staggering ineptitude of the human race. Djinn City is a darkly comedic fanlasy adventure, and a stirring follow-up to Hossain's 2015 novel Escape from Baghdad!, which NPR called "a hilarious and searing indictment of the project we euphemistically call 'nation-building.'"

It's 1976 and the United States is home to The Giganticos, a football super squad led by the one and only Pearl of Brazil, and more or less the only reason AASSA (American All-Star Soccer Association) exists. Enter Danny Hooper, a third-division English footballer from East Southwhich Albion, whose thuggish reputation limits him to playing the role of enforcer on the pitch, despite his admiration for the artistry of world-class football from Latin America and the Continent. After Danny takes his frustrations out on an unfortunate opponent's tibia, he finds himself sold to the Rose City Revolution of Portland. But there is more to the trade than a shocked Danny could ever imagine: turns out, he's going to America not just to introduce soccer to its skeptical masses, but to help foil a communist plot. What is the plot exactly? What could Danny possibly do to stop it? The future of America's soccer league, not to mention the life of the world's greatest soccer player, hangs in the balance; but it is author Dennie Wendt's pure love of the game, and his poetic sideline accounting of the Revolution's season, match by match, that will leave you cheering at the end.