
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
A Happier Ending by Bekim Sejranović