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Instruction Manual for Swallowing

Adam Marek

Instruction Manual for Swallowing by Adam Marek
Categories: 21st Century, British, First Collections, Humour
Imprint: Comma Press
Publisher: Comma Press
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  • Robotic insects, in-growing cutlery, flesh-serving waiters in a zombie cafe...

    Welcome to the surreal, misshapen universe of Adam Marek’s first collection; a bestiary of hybrids from the techno-crazed future and mythical past; a users’ guide to the seemingly obvious (and the world of illogic implicit within it). Whether fantastical or everyday in setting, Marek’s stories lead us down to the engine room just beneath modern consciousness, a place of both atavism and familiarity, where the body is fluid, the spirit mechanised, and beasts often tell us more about our humanity than anything we can teach ourselves.





    Adam Marek is an award-winning short story writer. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. His first story collection Instruction Manual for Swallowing was nominated for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His stories have appeared in many magazines, ... read more
    Awards won by Adam Marek Short-listed, 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. (The Stone Thrower ) Winner, 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship
    Praise for Adam Marek '€˜The fragility of children is overwhelming in this collection. In stories beautiful and strange, Marek tries to build a kind of fortress against what would truly break us. This is writing as exorcism and prayer, words to dispel brutality and fate.'
    David Vann
    'The Stone Thrower is best viewed as a window on Marek’s distinctive imagination, in which the mundane waltzes with the macabre... this bold young writer is refreshing the form.'
    The Financial Times
    'Hits the target every time.'
    The Guardian
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