Read in One Sitting

Of course, not all novelists stay within the lane of their identity. Jesse Ball, born in 1978, veers into the incoming traffic of differing selves with astonishing prolificacy. The author of almost twenty books, including novels, volumes of poetry, and collections of drawings, Ball inhabits whichever kind of character strikes his fancy. Samedi the Deafness follows a young man who gets caught up in a madcap scheme to render the whole world deaf; How to Set a Fire and Why is about a teenage girl who falls in with a group of anarchists. He writes in an absurdist, fable-like register, his books reading less like contemporary fiction and more like obscure fairy tales passed down from forgotten cultures.