Fiction Short Stories (single Author)
The Encyclopedia of Lies
- Publisher
- Anvil Press
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2017
- Category
- Short Stories (single author)
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781772140750
- Publish Date
- Apr 2017
- List Price
- $20
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
In these sixteen stories, Christopher Gudgeon, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Song of Kosovo, takes a heartbreaking and hilarious look into the lives, loves, sexual obsessions and delusions that inform a grand cast of off-kilter characters.
Here is a gay couple who persevere with their marriage plans as the world, literally, crumbles around them, a woman who discovers the mysterious collection of letters that reveals a terrifying truth about her deceased fiancée, a dutiful son, locked in an life-or-death marathon race with his famous father, and a baby who becomes infested with fruit flies, sending his adoptive parents into a spiral of recrimination and self-doubt.
At once bitterly funny, provocative and poignant, this remarkable collection builds on Gudgeon's growing literary reputation, offering up the work of a great storyteller at his very best. "Gudgeon is . . . a major new talent in Canadian literature." (The Quill and Quire on Greetings from the Vodka Sea) "a remarkable first novel." (The Victoria Times-Colonist on Song of Kosovo)
About the author
Christopher Gudgeon is an author and poet and screenwriter. He’s contributed to dozens of periodicals, including Playboy, MAD, National Lampoon, Geist, Event, and Malahat Review; and has written seventeen books, from critically acclaimed fiction like Song of Kosovo and Greetings from the Vodka Sea, to celebrated biographies of Stan Rogers and Milton Acorn, to a range of popular history on subjects as varied as sex, sexuality, fishing and lotteries. Gudgeon has more than 150 professional TV and film credits including creating, writing, and producing the Gemini-award winning series Ghost Trackers and the documentary, The Trick with the Gun. In his varied and spotty career, Gudgeon has worked a variety of jobs across Canada, the United States, and Europe including psychiatric orderly, rent boy, bartender, rock musician, rodeo clown, TV weatherman, and youth outreach worker. Gudgeon, who is bisexual, has been in an open relationship with author/self-help guru Jasper Vander Voorde since 2009. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Victoria, B.C.