The World Doesn't Require You
Stories
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Finalist • PEN / Jean Stein Book Award
Longlisted • Aspen Words Literary Prize
Best Books of the Year: Washington Post, NPR, Buzzfeed and Entropy
Best Short Story Collections of the Year: Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, the New York Public Library, and Electric Literature
Welcome to Cross River, Maryland, where Rion Amilcar Scott creates a mythical universe peopled by some of the most memorable characters in contemporary American fiction.
Set in the mythical Cross River, Maryland, The World Doesn’t Require You heralds “a major unique literary talent” (Entertainment Weekly). Established by the leaders of America’s only successful slave revolt in the mid-nineteenth century, the town still evokes the rhythms of its founding. With lyrical prose and singular dialect, Rion Amilcar Scott pens a saga that echoes the fables carried down for generations—like the screecher birds who swoop down for their periodic sacrifice, and the water women who lure men to wet death.
Among its residents—wildly spanning decades, perspectives, and species—are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God’s last son; Tyrone, a ruthless, yet charismatic Ph.D. candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood game ignites mayhem in the neighboring, once-segregated town of Port Yooga; and Jim, an all-too-obedient robot who obeys his Master. Culminating with an explosive novella, The World Doesn’t Require You is a “leap into a blazing new level of brilliance” (Lauren Groff) that affirms Rion Amilcar Scott as a writer whose storytelling gifts the world very much requires.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Rion Amilcar Scott’s second short-story collection takes place in an immersive, magical world that—if you squint just right—reveals itself to be our own. The first half’s beautifully surreal, myth-infused stories are set in the fictional locale of Cross River, Maryland and span from the period when the town was first founded by escaped slaves to a future robot uprising. The second-half novella, a dramedy about a disillusioned college professor’s personal collapse, brings the same blend of magic realism and inventive structures to an instantly recognizable workplace setting. We can’t wait for Scott to write a full novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 11 stories and a novella, Scott returns to the setting of his debut collection, Insurrections: fictional Cross River, Md., which, in an alternate history, is the location of the only successful slave revolt in America. Most stories are set in the present day; the prose is energetic and at times humorous often uncomfortably so as stories interrogate racist tropes. "The Electric Joy of Service" and "Mercury in Retrograde" recast the history of master, slave, and revolt in stories about intelligent robots designed with the facial features of lawn jockeys that fail to behave as programmed. In "David Sherman, the Last Son of God," David, the last (and least exalted) son of God, tries to redeem himself by leading a gospel band at his elder brother's church. And in the concluding novella, "Special Topics in Loneliness Studies," set at Cross River's historically black Freedman's University, the narrator plots the downfall of his departmental colleague, whose course syllabus and writing assignments grow increasingly entangled with his personal life. Throughout, the characters' experiences contrast the relative safety of Cross River with the more hostile ground of the once-segregated towns that surround it. It's clear, however, that threats whether they're siren-like water-women, academic saboteurs, or brutal family traditions can arise anywhere. Scott's bold and often outlandish imagination makes for stories that may be difficult to define, but whose emotional authenticity is never once in doubt.
