Sabina Murray

A blistering new novel that follows a Filipino American journalist's return to dictatorship-ruled Manila to research her book on tribes from a "cracklingly original" (Elle) and "singular" (New York Times Book Review) author, PEN Faulkner award-winner, Sabina Murray

The Human Zoo

Humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement and his closest friend Herbert Ward spent a misadventurous youth in the Congo, witnessing acts of cannibalism, among other things. Ward married Argentinian-American heiress Sarita Sanford, and they established a flourishing family life in France. Casement's covert homosexuality and nomadic lifestyle kept him floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. When World War I broke out, Casement and Ward's longstanding political differences finally come to a head, leading to results both tragic and riveting.

Valiant Gentlemen

Muckross Abbey and Other Stories

Told in highly intelligent prose reminiscent of Patrick McGrath or Angela Carter, this is a sly, unsettling exploration of the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of North American civilization.

A Carnivore's Inquiry

Traveling to 1963 Greece to collect pieces for his uncle William's classical art collection, American Rupert Brigg encounters a shadowy world of political intrigue, duplicitous women, deceptive diplomacy, and art reproductions and fakes, which make it difficult to determine what is real and what is false, a parallel to his own life of fabrication, secrets, and tragedy. By the author of A Carnivore's Inquiry.

Forgery

Slow Burn

A blistering new novel that follows a Filipino American journalist's return to dictatorship-ruled Manila to research her book on tribes from a "cracklingly original" (Elle) and "singular" (New York Times Book Review) author, PEN Faulkner award-winner, Sabina Murray. Filipino-American Christina "Ting" Klein has just travelled from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino brought to America at the start of 20th century to be exhibited as part of a "human zoo." It has been a year since Ting's last visit, and one year since Procopio "Copo" Gumboc swept the elections in an upset and took power as president. Arriving unannounced at her aging Aunt's aristocratic home, Ting quickly falls into upper class Manila life--family gatherings at her cousin's compound; spending time with her best friend Inchoy, a gay socialist professor of philosophy; and a flirtation with her ex-boyfriend Chet, a wealthy businessman with questionable ties to the regime. All the while, family duty dictates that Ting be responsible for Laird, a cousin's fiancé, who has come from the States to rediscover his roots. As days pass, Ting witnesses modern Filipino society languishing under Gumboc's terrifying reign. To make her way, she must balance the aristocratic traditions of her extended family, seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance, as well temper her stance towards a regime her loved ones are struggling to survive. Yet Ting cannot extricate herself from the increasingly repressive regime, and soon finds herself personally confronted by the horrifying realities of Gumboc's power. At once a propulsive look at contemporary Filipino politics and the history that impacted the country, The Human Zoo is a thrilling and provocative story from one of our most celebrated and important writers of literary fiction.

A Novel

Revolving around the Pacific campaigns of World War II, this collection of short stories captures the events, personalities, and harsh realities of war.

The Caprices

From a PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author, The Caprices, seduces readers with a thriller praised as “dazzling . . . lovely, literate and deeply unnerving” (The New York Times Book Review). When we meet Katherine, the winning—and rather disturbing—twenty-three-year-old narrator, she has just left Italy and arrived in New York City, but what has propelled her there is a mystery. She soon strikes up an affair with a middle-aged Russian émigré novelist she meets on the subway, and almost immediately moves into his apartment. Katherine’s occasional allusions to a frighteningly eccentric mother and tyrannical father suggest a somberness at the center of her otherwise flippant and sardonic demeanor. Soon restless, she begins journeying across the continent, trailed, everywhere she goes, by a string of murders. As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine takes to meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history. The story races toward a hair-raising conclusion, while Katherine and the reader close in on the reasons for both her and her mother’s fascination with aberrant, violent behavior. A brilliantly subtle commentary on twenty-first-century consumerism and Western culture’s obsession with new frontiers, A Carnivore’s Inquiry is an unsettling exploration of the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of civilization. “Murray paces her psychological thriller with consummate control, keeping the reader enthralled through subtle suggestion and a scattering of grisly details . . . Readers will be hooked by Murray’s classy treatment of her sexy-sinister subject matter.” —Publishers Weekly

In her first collection of stories since her PEN/Faulkner-winning The Caprices, Sabina Murray confronts the manipulation, compassion, ambition, and controversy surrounding some of the most intrepid and sadistic pioneers of the last four millennia. Iconic explorers and settlers are made intimately human as they plow through the un-navigated boundaries of their worlds to give shape to modern geography, philosophy, and science. As Ferdinand Magellan sets out on his final voyage, he forms an unlikely friendship with a rich scholar who harbors feelings for the captain, but in the end cannot save Magellan from his own greed. Balboa’s peek at the South Sea may never have happened if it wasn’t for his loyal and vicious dog, Leonico, and an unavoidable urge to relieve himself. And Captain Zimri Coffin is plagued by sleepless nights after reading Frankenstein, that is until his crew rescues two shipwrecked Englishmen who carry rumor of a giant and deadly white whale lurking in the depths of the ocean. With her signature blend of sophistication and savagery, darkness and humor, Sabina Murray investigates the complexities of faith, the lure of the unknown, and the elusive mingling of history and legend.

Sabina Murray

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