Prince of the World
Stories
-
- $20.99
-
- $20.99
Publisher Description
In these six stories, Chris Howard reasserts his talent for evoking the gritty and the apocalyptic with poetic grace.
Intelligent People Speaking Reasonably follows two Iraq vets adrift in the civilian life of the Pacific Northwest.
Space is Kindness witnesses the unexpected death of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan from the perspective of a local reporter and a photographer rushing to the crash-site in 2000.
Darkstar takes place in Dublin and follows a young outcast named Sailor through grimy, pre Apocalyptic streets as he tries to find the soulmate he hasn't seen since childhood.
Son of Man tells the story of the Manson family from the perspective of one of its members.
How to Make Millions in the Oil Market contemplates the absurdity of war from the point of view of a Blackwater contractor first in the chaos of Iraq and later in the relative peace of the US.
The epictitle story Prince of the World follows a mixed-race orphan named Labelle as he wanders north along the Mississippi, ultimately caught in the infamous Starved Rock Massacre in Howard's home-state of Illinois.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The mood of these six long, finely-written stories from Howard (Tea of Ulaanbaatar) is dark, sordid, and desperate. In the first, "Darkstar," Sailor, born to a prostitute and a "motionless cripple" in contemporary Dublin, seeks answers in what he believes are apocalyptical astronomical events, drawing him deeper into a world of violence and futility. In "Intelligent People Speaking Reasonably," two veterans of the Iraq War marvel at a rural American landscape "untouched by war" and question heroism. Another Iraq War story, "How to Make Millions in the Oil Market," gives the perspective of a modern mercenary: "Blackwater paid five times his Army salary, and people yelled at you a lot less." The most disturbing, and uneven, story in the collection is "Son of Man." Based on Charles Manson's cult, the story suggests a degree of government complicity in the heinous crimes. The title story, another novella-length piece, begins in 1818 and tells the heartbreaking tale of Labelle, a mixed-race orphan journeying up the Mississippi. Unsettled by the rise of technology, he comes to assert that "the Age of Man was expiring." Howard's characters live at the mercy of forces much larger than themselves. The collection etches a disturbing, unsettling vision, told with a brave, unflinching perspective that will unfortunately limit the book's audience.
