Josh Barkan ist ein preisgekrönter Autor, dessen Werke tiefgreifende Einblicke in die menschliche Psyche und die Komplexität zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen bieten. Sein Schreiben schöpft oft aus weitreichenden Lebenserfahrungen, die er während seiner Kindheit im Ausland und seiner akademischen Laufbahn gesammelt hat, was ihm ermöglicht, globale Themen aus einer besonderen Perspektive zu erforschen. Durch seinen meisterhaften Stil schafft Barkan fesselnde Erzählungen, die sowohl auf emotionaler als auch auf intellektueller Ebene bei den Lesern Anklang finden. Sein literarisches Talent wurde durch renommierte Auszeichnungen und Veröffentlichungen anerkannt, was seine Position als bedeutende Stimme in der zeitgenössischen Literatur bestätigt.
A shocking palm reading at a health retreat sets Paul Berger on a tumultuous path as he grapples with an ominous prophecy. As his fiancée, a former soap opera actress, teeters on the brink of leaving him, chaos ensues when she becomes the target of a shooting during a Revolutionary War reenactment in Concord. This blend of mysticism and unexpected danger propels Paul into a frantic quest to unravel the truth behind the reading and save his relationship.
The unforgettable characters in Josh Barkan’s astonishing and beautiful story collection—chef, architect, nurse, high school teacher, painter, beauty queen, classical bass player, plastic surgeon, businessman, mime—are simply trying to lead their lives and steer clear of violence. Yet, inevitably, crime has a way of intruding on their lives all the same. A surgeon finds himself forced into performing a risky procedure on a narco killer. A teacher struggles to protect lovestruck students whose forbidden romance has put them in mortal peril. A painter’s freewheeling ways land him in the back of a kidnapper’s car. Again and again, the walls between “ordinary life” and cartel violence are shown to be paper thin, and when they collapse the consequences are life-changing. These are stories about transformation and danger, passion and heartbreak, terror and triumph. They are funny, deeply moving, and stunningly well-crafted, and they tap into the most universal and enduring human experiences: love even in the face of danger and loss, the struggle to grow and keep faith amidst hardship and conflict, and the pursuit of authenticity and courage over apathy and oppression. With unflinching honesty and exquisite tenderness, Josh Barkan masterfully introduces us to characters that are full of life, marking the arrival of a new and essential voice in American fiction.
As death approaches, an old Japanese man finds it necessary to clean his soul, to confront the mistakes of his youth, and to confess about a time when he might have been able to save the thousands who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The title novella is complemented by Suspended: Five Stories. In the rest of the collection, through Barkan's beautifully direct style and canny ability to enter the mind, the reader gets to know a wide range of characters intimately. In Forty, a man from Boston travels to a wildlife refuge in Uganda, seeking to overcome a personal crisis. In Suspended, an amnesiac in Hawaii attempts to discover his real identity. Shanghaied features two lonely co-workers searching for love and excitement while on vacation. Banana Bat tells of a newlywed couple, honeymooning in Costa Rica, working to patch up an already faltering marriage. And in The Warrior, a young man falls in love with a woman whose fiancé committed suicide following the Gulf War.