McSweeney’s #76

Every issue of McSweeney’s is different. Each issue is completely redesigned—a unique work of art. Some issues are hardcovers, some are paperbacks, one issue came in a box shaped like a sweaty human head, one was disguised as a bag of party balloons, one looked like a pile of junk mail.

In this issue:  collection of contemporary Syrian prose—short stories, novel excerpts, and plays—that chronicles the literal and metaphorical earthquakes that haunt the Syrian people. Guest-edited by acclaimed Syrian American journalist Alia Malek, and encompassing the work of eight Arabic translators and sixteen Syrian writers (some of which have never before been translated in English), these contributors write across diasporic and refugee experiences, as well as from inside present-day Syria. In these pages, skeletons fall in love, Damascus alleys become time portals, letters tucked in bullet wounds reanimate the dead, minarets gush blood, and photographs become more human than humans. The requisite actors in these stories, and in any conflict (and crime)—victim, killer, survivor—are blurred and intimate. Magical realism, the absurd, and the surreal course through these pages. These stories ask us to imagine the unimaginable. They ask not “what is real?” but rather “how can this be real?”

San Francisco; 220x280mm; 318 pages, Quarterly,