I’m calling this the ICYMI List: It stands for “indie contributions you must ingest!” I love independent publishers, and I love lists, so I’m so excited to have the opportunity to get peanut butter in the chocolate and tell you about really amazing books at the same time! Feast your eyes on some of 2016’s best books from indie publishers. I’ve included a brief description about each from the publishers. Here’s hoping you find a hidden gem for a friend, a loved one, or yourself.
This is in no way a complete list of indie presses! But it’s a good jumping off point. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read, or other indie books you loved, or books you loved in general, or other awesome indie publishers. Let’s have one big indie love fest!
Akashic Books
The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
“Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden’s mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden’s familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.”
Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape by Jessica Luther
“This book is about a different kind of playbook: the one coaches, teams, universities, police, communities, the media, and fans seem to follow whenever a college football player is accused of sexual assault. It’s a deep dive into how different institutions–the NCAA, athletic departments, universities, the media–run the same plays over and over again when these stories break.”
The Bear Who Wasn’t There: And the Fabulous Forest by Oren Lavie (Author), Wolf Erlbruch (Illustrator)
“As whimsical as Winnie-the-Pooh and as wryly comic as Klassen’s bear who wants his hat back, The Bear Who Wasn’t There joins a select crew of unusual bears who have captured the imagination of children for generations.”
And Other Stories Publishing
I’ll Sell You a Dog by Juan Pablo Villalobos (Author), Rosalind Harvey (Translator)
“A delicious take-down of pretensions to cultural posterity, I’ll Sell You a Dog is a comic novel whose absurd inventions, scurrilous antics and oddball characters are vintage Villalobos.”
Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff (Author), Frank Perry (Translator)
“Mordantly funny, dryly sensual, written with a staggering lightness of touch, the debut novel in English by Swedish sensation Lina Wolff is a black and Bolaño-esque take on the limitations of love in a dog-eat-dog world.”
Arcade Publishing
Venom Doc: The Edgiest, Darkest, Strangest Natural History Memoir Ever by Bryan Grieg Fry
“Steve Irwin meets David Attenborough in this jaw-dropping account of studying the world’s most venomous creatures.”
More by Hakan Günday (Author), Zeynep Beler (Translator)
“This is a powerful exploration of the unfolding crisis by one of Turkey’s most exciting and critically acclaimed young writers who writes unflinchingly about social issues.”
Archipelago Books
The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy by Paulina Chiziane (Author), David Brookshaw (Translator)
“In this brilliantly funny and feverishly scathing critique, a major work from Mozambique’s first published female novelist, Paulina Chiziane explores her country’s traditional culture, its values and hypocrisy, and the subjection of women the world over.”
Wayward Heroes by Halldor Laxness (Author), Phillip Roughton (Translator)
“It is a masterfully written tragicomedy about the oath-brothers Thorgeir and Thormod, inspired by the old Icelandic sagas Saga of the Sworn Brothers and Saga of Saint Olaf.”
Arsenal Pulp Press
Becoming Unbecoming by Una
“The book is a no-holds-barred indictment of sexual violence against women and the shame and blame of its victims that also celebrates the empowerment of those able to gain control over their selves and their bodies.”
Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote
“Tomboy Survival Guide warmly recounts Ivan’s adventures and mishaps as a diffident yet free-spirited tomboy, and maps their journey through treacherous gender landscapes and a maze of labels that don’t quite stick, to a place of self-acceptance and an authentic and personal strength.”
Biblioasis
The Life-Writer by David Constantine
“After the death of her beloved husband, Katrin, a literary biographer, copes with the loss by writing his personal history. While researching the letters and journals he left behind, however, she comes to the devastating conclusion that his life before their marriage was far richer than the one they shared.”
The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes
“At a psychiatric hospital in the eighties, patients formed what they called The Adjustment League to protect themselves against the depredations of a corrupt and abusive staff. Many years later, the leader of this group—a man known only as “The Super”— receives a letter leading to the discovery of a pornographic ring in need of “adjustment.””
Black Balloon Publishing
Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir by Amy Kurzweil
“Amy weaves her own coming-of-age as a young Jewish artist into the narrative of her mother, a psychologist, and Bubbe, her grandmother, a World War II survivor who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto by disguising herself as a gentile.”
B.O.S.S
PWR VOL by Nick Scandy (Author), Aaron Zonka (Illustrator), mini and the Bear (Contributor)
“In PWR VOL, the frenetic rhythms, absurdist delusions, and cacophonous irrealities of modern life all find themselves pumped through full stacks of amplifiers, powerfully blasted at the maximum volume they deserve.”
Brain Mill Press
Documenting Light by EE Ottoman
“With sympathy and cutting insight, Ottoman offers a tour de force exploration of contemporary trans identity.”
Canarium Books
Palace of Subatomic Bliss by Darcie Dennigan
“Poetry. Drama. This book contains a play about a woman who dies twice, a treatise on why there are no female absurdists, and several unfortunate references to goldfish.”
Lucinda: A Poem by John Beer
“Using Friedrich Schlegel’s novel Lucinde as a starting point, Beer has written Lucinda, an incredible read unlike anything else.”
Catapult
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
“Margaret the First is very much a contemporary novel set in the past. Written with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time, it is a gorgeous and wholly new approach to imagining the life of a historical woman.”
Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live by Peter Orner
“An elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, Am I Alone Here? is also a celebration of the possibility of renewal. At once personal and panoramic, this book will inspire readers to return to the essential stories of their own lives.”
Nine Island by Jane Alison
“Nine Island is an intimate autobiographical novel, told by J, a woman who lives in a glass tower on one of Miami Beach’s lush Venetian Islands. After decades of disaster with men, she is trying to decide whether to withdraw forever from romantic love.”
Chelsea Green Publishing
Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees by Mike Shanahan
“They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers … rainforest royalty … more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, and they have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways. Gods, Wasps and Stranglers tells their amazing story.”
Chicago Review Press
The Doomed City by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Authors), Bromfield Andrew (Translator)
“The Doomed City was so politically risky that the Strugatsky brothers kept its existence a complete secret even from their closest friends for sixteen years after its completion in 1972. It was only published in Russia during perestroika in the late 1980s, the last of their works to see publication.”
Chizine Publications
The Rib From Which I Remake the World by Ed Kurtz
“Black magic and a terrifying Luciferian carnival boil up to a surreal finale for the town of Litchfield, and Jojo Walker is forced to face his own identity in ways he could never have imagined.”
Meatheads, or How to DIY Without Getting Killed by Noah Wareness
A surrealist, post-apocalyptic novel that is Chuck Palhaniuk intersecting with Hunter S. Thompson, Meatheads relates the bizarre, high-octane quest of mind-bent punks navigating the zombie-infested wasteland of San Angeles.”
Cinco Puntos Press
Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel
“Losing herself just as she finds herself, Rani discovers her need to speak out against those who would silence her—no matter the personal danger it leads her into.”
City Lights Publishers
Dated Emcees by Chinaka Hodge
“Form blends with content in Dated Emcees as she examines her love life through the lens of hip-hop’s best known orators, characters, archetypes and songs, creating a new and inventive narrative about the music that shaped the craggy heart of a young woman poet, just as it also changed the global landscape of pop.”
Civil Coping Mechanisms
Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz
“With Bruja, Ortiz continues to upend and reinvent the memoir in inventive and deeply emotional ways to better fit the terms and trajectory of her exploration.”
Transitory by Tobias Carroll
“Tobias Carroll introduces us to a perspective of the world as uncanny as it is erudite, as revealing as it is hidden, where the absurd is often the most preferable of outcomes.”
The Book of Endless Sleepovers by Henry Hoke
“The Book of Endless Sleepovers is wry and finely-wrought, a philosophical fever dream studded with the pleasure of proper names and surprising turns of phrase, a lyric page-turner.” -Maggie Nelson
Cleis Press
Dirty Thirty: A Memoir by Asa Akira
“Personally revealing as well as universal, Dirty Thirty marks the coming of age of a new literary star.”
Coach House
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier (Author), Rhonda Mullins (Translator)
“A fifteenth-century portrait painter, grieving the untimely death of his unrequited love, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France.”
The Hidden Keys by André Alexis
“Based on a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, The Hidden Keys questions what it means to be honorable and what it means to be faithful.”
Coffee House Press
Among Strange Victims by Daniel Saldaña París (Author), Christina MacSweeney (Translator)
“Earthy, playful, and sly, Among Strange Victims is a psychedelic ode to the pleasures of not measuring up.”
The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas
“Extravagant, absurd, and self-aware, The Revolutionaries Try Again plays out against the lost decade of Ecuador’s austerity and the stymied idealism of three childhood friends—an expat, a bureaucrat, and a playwright—who are as sure about the evils of dictatorship as they are unsure of everything else, including each other.”
Unbearable Splendor by Sun Yung Shin
“Sun Yung Shin moves ideas—of identity (Korean, American, adoptee, mother, Catholic, Buddhist) and interest (mythology, science fiction, Sophocles)— around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be at home.”
Copper Canyon Press
Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda by Pablo Neruda (Author), Forrest Gander (Translator)
“Originally composed on napkins, playbills, receipts, and notebooks, Neruda’s lost poems are full of eros and heartache, complex wordplay and deep wonder.”
Counterpoint
Grace by Natashia Deón
“It is a universal story of freedom, love, and motherhood, told in a dazzling and original voice set against a rich and transporting historical backdrop.”
The Penny Poet of Portsmouth: A Memoir Of Place, Solitude, and Friendship by Katherine Towler
“The Penny Poet of Portsmouth, bracing in its intimacy and elegance, is so much more than a memoir, or a biography, or even an elegy. It is the fable of a shared journey and a portrait of an abiding friendship— a fitting tribute to the Penny Poet of Portsmouth.”
Moshi-Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto (Author), Asa Yoneda (Translator)
“With the lightness of touch and surreal detachment that are the hallmarks of her writing, Banana Yoshimoto turns a potential tragedy into a poignant coming-of-age ghost story and a life-affirming homage to the healing powers of community, food, and family.”
Every Kind of Wanting by Gina Frangello
“By turns funny, dark and sexy, Every Kind of Wanting strips bare the layers of the American family today. Tackling issues such as assimilation, the legacy of secrets, the morality of desire, and ultimately who “owns” love, the characters—across all ethnicities, nationalities, and sexualities—are blisteringly alive.”
Curbside Splendor Publishing
The Telling by Zoe Zolbrod
“The Telling is an intimate examination of one woman’s reckoning with a past she can’t always explain, and a life lived in search for the right words.”
Mickey by Chelsea Martin
“Told in a series of vignettes, Mickey is one young woman’s journey to figuring out life (or not) amidst drunken mistakes, reality TV marathons, bathroom sex, and the daydreamed titles of imaginary art installations.”
Dalkey Archive Press
Bottom’s Dream by Arno Schmidt (Author), John E. Woods (Translator)
“Since its publication in 1970 Zettel’s Traum/Bottom’s Dream has been regarded as Arno Schimdt’s magnum opus, as the definitive work of a titan of postwar German literature.”
Dark Horse Press
Scratch by Steve Himmer
“After an aimless life, Martin Blaskett is ready to settle down, unaware of the tension rising in his new town from unknowable forces. When he draws the attention of a shape-shifter from local legend, his world is shaken, and he is led across the hazy border of the feral wilderness with a tempestuous history.”
Deep Vellum
Seeing Red by Lina Meruane (Author), Megan McDowell (Translator)
“Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships.”
One Hundred Twenty-One Days by Michèle Audin (Author), Christiana Hills (Translator)
“This debut novel by mathematician and Oulipo member Michèle Audin retraces the lives of French mathematicians over several generations through World Wars I and II.”
Before by Carmen Boullosa (Author), Peter Bush (Translator)
“Part bildungsroman, part ghost story, part revenge novel, Before tells the story of a woman who returns to the landscape of her childhood to overcome the fear that held her captive as a girl.”
Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi (Author), Jeffrey Zuckerman (Translator)
“Eve out of Her Ruins is a heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of the construction of personhood at the margins of society.”
Dorothy, a publishing project
The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George
“Combining slapstick, surrealism, erotica, and social criticism, Jen George’s sprawling creative energy belies the secret precision and unexpected tenderness of everything she writes.”
Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger (Author), Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon (Translators)
“Moving contrapuntally between biography and auto-fiction, film criticism and anecdote, fact and speculation, Suite for Barbara Loden is a stunning meditation on knowledge and self-knowledge, on the surfaces of life and art, and how we come to truth—a kind of truth—not through facts alone but through acts of the imagination.”
Dzanc Books
Late One Night by Lee Martin
“In Late One Night, Lee Martin examines the devastating effect of rumors and the resilience of one family in the face of the ultimate tragedy.”
Clothed, Female Figure: Stories by Kirstin Allio
“Through ten independent but thematically linked stories, Allio conjures women in conflict and on the edge, who embrace, battle, and transcend their domestic dimensions.”
The Pavilion of Former Wives: Stories by Jonathan Baumbach
“In 14 thematically linked stories, Jonathan Baumbach explores the sour and bitter sweetness of relationships just beginning and already over, and the frailty that love makes of us.”
ECW Press
The Conjoined by Jen Sookfong Lee
“Moving between present and past, The Conjoined unflinchingly examines the myth of social heroism, how race and class can assign unwanted roles to society’s most vulnerable individuals, and the well-intentioned social service workers who mean to help.”
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
“Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father’s legacy and her mother’s addictions, testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. Ari spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses.”
Emily Books
Problems by Jade Sharma
“This book takes every tired trope about addiction and recovery, “likeable” characters, and redemption narratives, and blows them to pieces.”
I’ll Tell You in Person: Essays by Chloe Caldwell
“Flailing in jobs, failing at love, getting addicted and un-addicted to people, food, and drugs—I’ll Tell You in Person is a disarmingly frank account of attempts at adulthood and all the less than perfect ways we get there.”
Europa Editions
The Golden Age by Joan London
“With tenderness and humor, The Golden Age tells a deeply moving story about illness and recovery. It is a book about learning to navigate the unfamiliar, about embracing music, poetry, death, and, most importantly, life.”
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
“The Natural Way of Things is at once lucid and illusory, a brilliantly plotted novel of ideas that reminds us of mankind’s own vast contradictions—the capacity for savagery, selfishness, resilience, and redemption all contained by a single, vulnerable body.”
Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera
“In a fresh narrative voice that wryly observes, questions, and reflects, Sanghera confronts the complexities of tradition, culture, love, and family. Readers will find more laughter than sadness, smiling even when the Banga family’s story seems hopeless.”
The Feminist Press
Black Wave by Michelle Tea
“While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.”
Death Is Stupid by Anastasia Higginbotham
“Necessary, beautiful, and ultimately reassuring, Death Is Stupid is an invaluable tool for discussing death, but also the possibilities for celebrating life and love.”
Future Tense Books
The Folly of Loving Life by Monica Drake
“The Folly of Loving Life features linked stories examining an array of characters at their most vulnerable and human, often escaping to somewhere or trying to find stability in their own place.”
Sing the Song by Monica Alling
“With an ancient ham crawling out from a sewer to tell fortunes, a lone blonde at a party for redheads, and a mother outsmarting a masked criminal, Sing the Song bleeds and breathes with dreamlike surprise.”
Gorsky Press
Everyone Loves You Back by Louie Cronin
“Louie Cronin’s breakthrough novel is a coming-of-middle-age story that pays homage to the everyday.”
Graywolf Press
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy
“An urgent and entertaining missive on craft, Thrill Me brims with Percy’s distinctive blend of anecdotes, advice, and close reading, all in the service of one dictum: Thrill the reader.”
Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here by Angela Palm
“It means trying to chart, through the mesmerizing, interconnected essays of Riverine, what happens when a single event forces the path of her life off course.”
Swallowed by the Cold: Stories by Jensen Beach
“The intricate, interlocking stories of Jensen Beach’s extraordinarily poised story collection are set in a Swedish village on the Baltic Sea as well as in Stockholm over the course of two eventful years.”
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood by Belle Boggs
“In The Art of Waiting, Boggs deftly distills her time of waiting into an expansive contemplation of fertility, choice, and the many possible roads to making a life and making a family.”
Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
“Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter’s extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect.”
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
“A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look.”
Grove Atlantic
Lions by Bonnie Nadzam
“Bonnie Nadzam—author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning debut, Lamb—returns with this scorching, haunting portrait of a rural community in a “living ghost town” on the brink of collapse, and the individuals who are confronted with either chasing their dreams or—against all reason—staying where they are.”
The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo (Author), Lola Rogers (Translator)
“Set in an alternative historical present, in a “eusistocracy”—an extreme welfare state—that holds public health and social stability above all else, it follows a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the state.”
Bottomland by Michelle Hoover
“Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression.”
Interlude Press
Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee
“Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef-up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid!) internship only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain.”
Luchador by Erin Finnegan
“Surrounded by a makeshift family of wrestlers, Gabriel charts a course to balance ambition, sexuality, and loyalty to find the future that may have been destined for him since childhood.”
Jellyfish Highway
Daughters of Monsters by Melissa Goodrich
“Melissa Goodrich’s debut short story collection, Daughters of Monsters, is a raw and magical book of spells, an honest yet harrowing look at the wonder and threat of the world.”
John F. Blair, Publisher
The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time by Steven Sherrill
“In The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time, M has moved north, from a life of kitchens and trailer parks, to that of Civil War re-enactor at a run-down living history park in the dying blue-collar rustbelt of central Pennsylvania.”
Lazy Fascist Press
Witch Hunt by Juliet Escoria
“The much-anticipated full-length poetry collection by the critically acclaimed author of Black Cloud, Witch Hunt delves into the terror and beauty that occurs when love, madness, and addiction collide.”
Leapfrog Press
The Solace of Monsters by Laurie Blauner
“The Solace of Monsters contrasts the creation of life with its ending. How does an artificial creature discover life? What do her adventures tell us about “natural” life and our own attempts to survive—and find solace—in the world?”
Lookout Books
We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories by Clare Beams
“As they capture the strangeness of being human, the stories in We Show What We Have Learned reveal Clare Beams’s rare and capacious imagination—and yet they are grounded in emotional complexity, illuminating the ways we attempt to transform ourselves, our surroundings, and each other.”
McSweeney’s
The Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler
“Jay Hopler’s second collection, a mourning song for his father, is an elegy of uproar, a careening hymn to disaster and its aftermath. In lyric poems by turns droll and desolate, Hopler documents the struggle to live in the face of great loss, a task that sends him ranging through Florida’s torrid subtropics, the mountains of the American West, the streets of Rome, and the Umbrian countryside.”
Melville House
Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor
“A deft, funny, and big-hearted novel about second chances, Good on Paper is a grand novel of family, friendship, and possibility.”
The Insides by Jeremy Bushnell
“Now, magic is back in Ollie’s life and she’s being chased through New York City, with the fabric of space-time tattering around her and weird inter-dimensional worms squirming their way into her kitchen. And before it’s all over she’s going to need to face up to the Possible Consequences of some bad decisions, to look at the uncomfortable truths that she stuffed away long ago, deep down … inside . . .”
The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay
“Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.”
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why by Sady Doyle
“For an age when any form of self-expression can be the one that ends you, Sady Doyle’s book is as fierce and intelligent as it is funny and compassionate—an essential, timely, feminist anatomy of the female trainwreck.”
The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz (Author), Elisabeth Jaquette (Translator)
“Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.”
Milkweed Editions
The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay (Author), Sheila Fischman (Translator)
“Both current and timeless, written with the sharp purity of desert poetry, The Orange Grove depicts the haunting inheritance of war and its aftermath.”
Four Reincarnations: Poems by Max Ritvo
“Reverent and profane, entertaining and bruising, Four Reincarnations is a debut collection of poems that introduces an exciting new voice in American letters.”
Into the Sun by Deni Ellis Béchard
“In this monumental novel, Deni Ellis Béchard draws an unsentimental portrait of those who flock to warzones, indelibly capturing these journalists, mercenaries, idealists, and aid workers.”
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham
“By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today.”
Nation Books
Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education by Mychal Denzel Smith
“In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity.”
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
“In shedding much-needed light on the murky history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose them–and in the process, gives us reason to hope.”
Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt by Sarah Jaffe
“Necessary Trouble is the definitive book on the movements that are poised to permanently remake American politics.”
Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge
“This powerful and moving work puts a human face—a child’s face—on the “collateral damage” of gun deaths across the country. This is not a book about gun control, but about what happens in a country where it does not exist. What emerges in these pages is a searing and urgent portrait of y