Of course, each thing has its own sides to every story.

In a dark and crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box and chase after the stranger who dropped it?

The Box follows an impenetrable rectangular cuboid as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box's life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumours and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them. Haunting their recollections in one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box's good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.

In this mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, Mandy-Suzanne Wong challenges our understanding of subject and objects, of cause and effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn't animate? What do we value and what do we discard?

MANDY-SUZANNE WONG is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. Her works include the novel Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House, 2019); the essay collection Listen, we all bleed (New Rivers Press, 2021); and the chapbooks Awabi and Artificial Wilderness. Her work has appeared in Arcturus, Black Warrior Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, Island Review, and Necessary Fiction, and has won recognition in the Best of the Net, Aeon Award, and Eyelands Flash Fiction competitions.

Mandy-Suzanne Wong's profile page

• Long-listed, Republic of Consciousness Prize for Best Fiction

"A feast of knotty sentences … Fans of experimental fiction ought to check this out." — Publishers Weekly

"The Box is not a relaxing read, but neither is it trying to be. The prose is dense, intelligent, and often striking." — Literary Review of Canada

"Delivers something rare, evoking a creepy sort of glamour around books and stories, as if craving a good read is itself sometimes a form of dark desire." — Kirkus

"Wong displays formidable skill … drawing us into the highly wrought maze of her novel and making it fun." — New York Times

“A dark, surreal odyssey and a fascinating entanglement of language and cultural analysis … [The Box is a] satisfyingly strange novel.” — EVENT

"Endlessly creative and inventive ... Perfectly crafted writing." — White Wall Review