Demented North

From the bestselling author of Ohio and The Deluge comes a wild, inventive, kaleidoscopic short story collection that reckons with the full sweep of the human project—the myths, delusions, triumphs, and atrocities that define us.

In “Chimera,” an ambitious contemporary artist creates a work that challenges the limits of ethics and science. In “Night and Fog Over Copenhagen,” a woman with a particular set of skills goes in search of her sister and instead finds a bottomless mystery. In “Splat’s Dangerous Idea,” prehistoric humans stumble toward a radical new technology: language. And in “The Bosh Rebound” a professional basketball player’s clutch play serves as explanation and meditation on all of human existence. Within these stories there is no safe harbor and no way to predict what’s coming next—just the artists and athletes, scientists and detectives, revolutionaries, serial killers, and spies haunting humanity’s long journey from its cradle and into the unknown.

By turns hilarious, unsettling, heartbreaking, and intellectually thrilling, Demented North blends literary fiction, satire, and razor-sharp social observation into a collection unlike any other. With unforgettable characters and astonishing range, Stephen Markley examines the fragile stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world.

A sweeping, audacious collection from one of Americas most ambitious writers, Demented North asks what it means to be human across the vast arc of our shared past—and our uncertain future.