The Natural State of Things
About this book
Magical realist in form, The Natural State of Things is an edgy, bleak, and selectively grotesque anthology of short stories critiquing modern society through hyperbole. The centrepiece narrative follows a nameless man whose world has quite turned upside down – literally. After an unusual fall, he wakes up one morning on the ceiling, having discovered that his own personal gravity has inverted, although the world around him remains unchanged. As he struggles with figuring out how to survive in an upside-down world, he must re-evaluate every coping mechanism he’s leaned on when it was his life was once right-side up, as if his life depends on it.
This intriguing narrative is sandwiched by three short, seemingly unrelated vignettes on either side of the telling. Altogether, the seven stories stitched together turn common sense, the laws of nature, and conventional good taste on their head. They not only question our understanding of normality, but also the fundamental laws of physics and even conventional good taste. In doing so, it is both a denunciation and a portrait of the times we live in.
Winner of the Gabriel García Márquez Hispano-American Short Story Prize.
Translated by Julia Jakus
