JON BENON ELSBURG, USA

In the tradition of Joyce’s Dubliners, Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, and the Southern grotesque, this topographical cycle of twelve discrete but interrelated short stories explores the patterns of power that permeate the lives of more than thirty characters in the mythological town of Elsburg, U.S.A. Opening with the ill-fated life of a young faith-healing preacher, including the portrait of a fundamentalist octogenarian barber, and concluding with the struggle of an eccentric centenarian physician who stills wants to practice his profession, this cycle of narratives, told in a variety of styles often reminiscent of Southern authors like Faulkner, O’Connor, Porter, and Welty, exposes a vibrant and latent phantasmagorical world that subtly intrigues, fascinates, and, at times, startles the reader.