McSWEENEY’S ISSUE 48

With sixteen new stories and a full-length screenplay, McSweeney’s 48 was just too much for a single book to hold—a wild leviathan, you could say, whose tongue we could not tie down with a rope. (Job 41:1 is now believed to refer to this issue.) We were, however, able to split it into two books, and the results are terrific. In the first, we’ve got stunning work from Kelly Link, Rebecca Curtis, Etgar Keret, and Ismet Prcic, as well as stories of blind boyfriends and dead tourists and doomed Moldovan press junkets; in the second, we’ve got the delightfully weird debut screenplay of none other than Boots Riley, frontman of the Coup. Are there stories from Croatia, also? Are there love stories set amid street protests and ghost stories set amid nudist colonies? Is the issue, as a whole, so dazzling that you will feel a little bit dizzy afterward? There are, and it is, and we’re very excited to be bringing this one to you.

You can read Kelly Link’s story, “I Can See Right Through You,” in its entirety here.

Table of Contents:

Sorry to Bother You, a full-length screenplay by Boots Riley

Letters from Gary Rudoren, Dan Keane, Katherine Heiny, Colin Winnette, Rachel B. Glaser, Keaton Patti, David Gumbiner, Sonny Smith, and Matt Sumell

Only Good for a Day by Julia Slavin

The Lazarus Correction by Dan Keane

I Can See Right Through You by Kelly Link

Waterloo! by Rebecca Curtis

Nimrods by Ismet Prcic

Because Night Has Fallen and the Barbarians Have Not Come by Valeria Luiselli

One, Maybe Two Minutes from Fire by Téa Obreht

Gainliness by John McManus

Gaustine’s Projects by Georgi Gospodinov

St. E’s by Paula Whyman

an excerpt from All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

The Dentist on the Ridge by Dave Eggers

Alienation and Absurdity, at Home and Abroad: Six Stories from Croatia
With photos by Boris Cvjetanović

Introduction: The New Wave of Croatian Writing by Josip Novakovich

Authentic Moldova by Gordan Juhanović

Hair by Tea Tulić

It’s Me by Damir Karakaš

Pretty Hunger by Olja Savičević

Saliva by Zoran Ferić