'When a collection is evocative of authors as disparate as Ray Bradbury and Stephanie Vaughn, the only possible unifier can be originality: and that’s what a reader finds in Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. Kim Fu writes with grace, wit, mischief, daring, and her own deep weird phosphorescent understanding.' – Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories Every story here lights a flame in the memory, shining brighter as time goes by rather than dimming. ' Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is one of those rare collections that never suffers from which-one-was-that-again? syndrome. 'Fu joins recent maestros Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Friday Black, 2018), Charles Yu (Sorry Please Thank You, 2012), and Seong-nan Ha (Bluebeard’s First Wife, 2020) in creating irrefutably fantastic fiction.' – Booklist, starred review These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, as they unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll a runaway bride encounters a sea monster a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. The debut collection from PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and ‘propulsive storyteller’ (NYT Book Review), with stories that are by turns poignant and pulpy LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE LITHUB BEST REVIEWED SCI-FI, FANTASY AND HORROR OF 2022

LITHUB BEST REVIEWED SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS 2022 TIME MAGAZINE'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2022 SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEĬBC BOOKS: THE BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2022įeatured on CBC's The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers

Monsters of the 21st century