Mark Slouka

Still reeling from the death of his older brother, a sixteen-year-old track star befriends a street-fighting rebel and together they search for redemption amidst the social changes of 1968.

Brewster: A Novel

Growing up in New York as the American-born son of Czech immigrants, the narrator journeys to Prague as an adult in the hope of learning more about his mother, Ivana, her love affair with a member of the Czech Resistance, and their possible involvement in the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi official. By the author of God's Fool.

The Visible World

"A searing, poignantly rendered collection of stories chronicling the lives of ordinary people battling the forces of love and loss. In eleven beautifully wrought stories--ranging from occupied Czechoslovakia to California's Central Valley to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest--Mark Slouka explores moments in life when our backs are to the wall. Whether battling the end of desire, the fact of injustice, or death itself, the men and women in these stories are willing to use whatever comes to hand--luck, accident, desperate gesture--to emerge victorious. In "Crossing," a father hoping to compensate for his failures finds himself facing his past while fording a river with his young son on his back; in "Conception," a young couple frozen by the possible end of their marriage is offered an unexpected way back; in "Half- Life," a proud, aging shut- in finds her resolve tested by an extraordinary visitor determined to shatter her solitude. Alternately harrowing and redemptive, these are stories of ordinary men and women, doing everything possible to tighten their grip on life" --

stories

All that is left is all that matters

In this haunting novel, Mark Slouka brilliantly captures the polarising forces of a working class, hardscrabble ethos and the hopeful vibrancy of the sixties and early seventies. With concise, wise prose, he weaves together a tapestry of family, fate, friendship, and the impossibility of ever, really, leaving home. Originally published: New York: W.

a novel

Brewster

Set in a tiny Czech community on the shores of Lost Lake, these stories chronicle three generations of men and women under the spell of a landscape with a powerful history. Mark Slouka explores both the quiet glory of the natural world and the mysterious motions of the human spirit. A New York Times Notable Book A California Book Award Silver Medalist for Fictio

Lost Lake

From an author whose gifts recall Milan Kundera and W.G. Sebald, "The Visible World" is a literary page-turner and an immensely powerful novel about the vagaries of love and the need to make sense of life through the telling of stories.

“A vibrantly told love story” with tragic roots in WWII Czechoslovakia (The Washington Post). An American-born son of Czech immigrants grows up in postwar New York, part of a boisterous community of the displaced where he learns fragments of European history, Czech fairy tales, and family secrets gleaned from overheard conversations. Central in his young imagination is the heroic account of the seven Czech parachutists who, in 1942, assassinated a high-ranking Nazi. Yet one essential story has always evaded him: his mother’s. He suspects she had a great wartime love, the loss of which bred a sadness that slowly engulfed her. As an adult, he travels to Prague, hoping to piece together her hidden past—leading to the compelling story at the heart of The Visible World—an “almost unbearably poignant work . . . a penetrating, beautifully composed novel from a writer with a tangible sense of place and period,” the acclaimed author of Brewster and God’s Fool, named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle (Booklist). “The sheer beauty of Mark Slouka’s prose will draw comparisons to The English Patient.” —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times–bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story “A book that will last.” —Colum McCann, National Book Award–winning author of Let the Great World Spin

A Novel

"If you can read [God’s Fool] without being astonished and touched, then you’d better check to see if your heart is made of stone…simply brilliant. A book of the year." —Dallas Morning News Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng were considered a marvel, an act of God. By any standard, theirs is a history of epic variety and drama. Mark Slouka recounts their tumultuous story, from the docks of Vietnam to American fame, with intimacy and compassion. A Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News Best Book of the Year.

God's Fool: A Novel

A new collection of prophetic essays from one of the sharpest practitioners of the form Mark Slouka writes from a particular vantage point, one invoked by Thoreau, who wished "to improve the nick of time . . . to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future." At this bewildering convergence, Slouka asks us to consider what it means to be human and what we must revive, or reject, in order to retain our humanity in the modern world. Collected over fifteen years, these essays include fascinating explorations of the relationship between memory and history and the nature of "tragedy" in a media-driven culture; meditations on the transcendent "wisdom" of the natural world and the role of silence in an age of noise; and arguments in defense of the political value of leisure time and the importance of the humanities in an age defined by the language of science and industry. Written in Slouka's supple and unerring prose, celebratory, critical, and passionate, Essays from the Nick of Time reawakens us to the moment and place in which we find ourselves, caught between the fading presence of the past and the neon lure of the future.

Reflections and Refutations

Essays from the Nick of Time

A searing, poignantly rendered collection of stories chronicling the lives of ordinary people battling the forces of love and loss, from "one of the great unsung writers of our time" (Colum McCann). In fifteen beautifully wrought stories—ranging from occupied Czechoslovakia to California’s Central Valley to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest—Mark Slouka explores moments in life when our back is to the wall. One of the most forceful American writers of his generation, Slouka captures the depth and emotional range of an array of characters—from a young boy attempting to shield his father from painful memories in "The Hare’s Mask" to a lonely man whose beloved dog inexplicably begins to sprout razor blades from her skin in "Dog." Whether battling the end of desire, the fact of injustice, or death itself, the men and women in these stories are doing everything possible to tighten their grip on life. In "Crossing," a father hoping to compensate for his failures finds himself facing his past while fording a river with his young son on his back; in "Conception," a young couple frozen by the possible end of their marriage is offered an unexpected way back; in "Half-Life," a proud, aging shut-in finds her resolve tested by an extraordinary visitor determined to shatter her solitude. Like its title, All That Is Left Is All That Matters consoles us with life’s tender humor and unexpected moments of redemption in the face of heartbreak, tragedy, and dislocation.

All That Is Left Is All That Matters: Stories

God's Fool is a story of the lives of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng who were attached at the chest. To the West they were freaks, to the East they were either evidence of God's glory or proof of his wrath. This novel follows their path from Thailand to Europe, and then on to the USA.

God's Fool

As an infant, Jon Mosher tragically lost his older brother to a freak accident - something that could have happened to any family. There's nothing he could have done to prevent it, but there it is anyway, that loss echoing in every room and painted on the faces of his parents - German Jews who'd escaped the war - as if to say: you weren't, and aren't, enough. Saddled with this absence, Jon's life has been defined by what's missing and what he lacks; that is, until in high school he befriends wisecracking Ray, a reckless boy with a volatile father. Against the backdrop of the Summer of Love and the encroaching Vietnam War, Jon dreams of ultimately leaving his grey, blue-collar town, but is set on an irrevocable course as the escalating violence of Ray's home life threatens to shatter their bright-eyed plans to escape. Torn between obligation and desire, Jon's faced with the impossible decision of whether to help, or run. In this magnificent, haunting novel, Slouka brilliantly captures the polarising forces of a working class, hardscrabble ethos and the hopeful vibrancy of the sixties and early seventies. With concise, wise prose, Slouka weaves together a tapestry of family, fate, friendship, and the impossibility of ever, really, leaving home.

Warning: A technological revolution is unfolding that promises, in the words of its creators, to redefine what it means to be human. Face-to-face communication (“F2F” to those in the know) is quickly becoming obsolete; already we turn to computers for information, entertainment, companionship—even love. Science fiction? Hardly. This is the brave new vision of the digital avant-garde, computer crusaders leading a high-tech assault on what was once known as reality. Sophisticated, well-funded, unabashedly messianic, they have the power, the technological know-how, and the marketplace savvy to make good on many of their wildest prophecies. With War of the Worlds, Mark Slouka gives us a funny, but eerily disturbing, humanist's look at the culture of cyberspace.

Cyberspace And The High-tech Assault On Reality

War Of The Worlds

Mark Z. Slouka argues that the perception of reality in America has been radically altered by the emergence of new technologies. The notion of reality as an empirical shared state of existence has been particularly challenged by a revolution in the virtual technologies spawned by the computer industry.

Mark Slouka

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