Riots I Have Known
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Ryan Chapman’s “gritty, bracing debut” (Esquire) set during a prison riot is “dark, daring, and laugh-out-loud hilarious…one of the smartest—and best—novels of the year” (NPR).
A largescale riot rages through Westbrook prison in upstate New York, incited by a poem in the house literary journal. Our unnamed narrator, barricaded inside the computer lab, swears he’s blameless—even though, as editor-in-chief, he published the piece in question. As he awaits violent interruption by his many, many enemies, he liveblogs one final Editor’s Letter. Riots I Have Known is his memoir, confession, and act of literary revenge.
His tale spans a childhood in Sri Lanka, navigating the postwar black markets and hotel chains; employment as a Park Avenue doorman, serving the widows of the one percent; life in prison, with the silver lining of his beloved McNairy; and his stewardship of The Holding Pen, a “masterpiece of post-penal literature” favored by Brooklynites everywhere. All will be revealed, and everyone will see he’s really a good guy, doing it for the right reasons.
“Fitfully funny and murderously wry,” Riots I Have Known is “a frenzied yet wistful monologue from a lover of literature under siege” (Kirkus Reviews).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This hilarious and fast-paced novella is a smart satire of lofty aspirations and bad decisions. As a full-scale riot rages outside, an unnamed prisoner who edits a popular prison literary magazine read around the world barricades himself inside the penitentiary’s media center. Fearing death, he blogs with all his heart, reacting in real time to both his social-media followers and the chaos closing in on him. With Riots I Have Known, Ryan Chapman establishes himself as a master of wit, satire, and heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While fellow inmates at the Westbrook prison in upstate New York are rioting, an erudite unnamed Sri Lankan intellectual attempts to put into words his philosophy, personal history, and, eventually, the events that led up to the riot in Chapman's funny and excellent debut. The narrator has barricaded himself in the Media Center, trying to finish what could be the final issue of his in-house magazine, The Holding Pen. The narrative gets its most solid comic charge from the ironic disparity between the rough circumstances of prison life and the incongruous need of humans to intellectualize. The narrator reports that just before another inmate was stabbed in the yard, "he said: Time makes fools of us all.'" Later he recounts the tale of inept would-be suicide Fritz, who can't "master the hangman's noose, he kept falling to his cell floor in a blooper of self-abnegation." While the narrator documents his uneasy adjustment to prison life and his complex relationship with a pen pal, he is most concerned with his legacy within the niche world of "post-penal literary magazines." He confesses early on: "I am the architect of the Caligulan melee enveloping Westbrook's galleries and flats." The explanation for this claim is offered in spoonfuls; it's mostly a MacGuffin for protracted yarn spinning and Chapman's dazzling virtuosity. Supremely mischievous and sublimely written, this is a stellar work.
