Laird Hunt Books In Order

The Impossibly

When the anonymous narrator botches an assignment from the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life becomes a participant in his punishment. In the end, he is called out of retirement for a final assignment: to seek and identify his own assassin. This story of a man lost out of his mind in a complex and faulty memory driven world has the dark absurdity of a Kafka.

Indiana, Indiana

‘In the center of the county in the center of Indiana in the heart of the country, and down a long, dark hallway,’ Noah Summers, a simple man who has led a far from simple life, sits before a roaring fire, drifting in and out of sleep. On this dark and lovely winter night, he will sift through the shards of his memories, trying to make sense of a lifetime of psychic visions and his family’s tumultuous history on an Indiana farmstead. As a young man, Noah, a true innocent, fell deeply in love with Opal, a young woman with a penchant for flames. Once married, the couple move into their own house on his family s farm. After forty two idyllic days, Opal is overcome by her fascination with fire and institutionalized. Though Noah embarks on a journey to save her, he cannot, and must instead rely on her letters, his memories, and the strength of his family to sustain him. Written in a masterful elegiac style that echoes Faulkner and Steinbeck, Indiana, Indiana is a compellingly beautiful and surreal Midwestern saga firmly grounded in an Indiana landscape populated by farmers, drifters, sheriffs, and ministers, and overflowing with musical saws, family bibles stuffed with flowers, and appliances rusting in the fields. ‘As everyone who read The Impossibly knows, Laird Hunt s ability to create a sense of otherworldliness is astonishing. Indiana, Indiana resonates for miles.’ Amy Fusselman, author of The Pharmacist s MatLaird Hunt, former United Nations press officer and current faculty member at Naropa University, has lived in Singapore, Tokyo, London, Paris, The Hague, and on a farm in Indiana. He is the author of the novel The Impossibly, and his writing has appeared both here and abroad in many publications, including Grand Street, Fence, Conjunctions, Ploughshares, and Zoum Zoum. He and his wife, poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado.

The Exquisite

‘Strange, original, and utterly brilliant Laird Hunt is one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today.’ Paul Auster

Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety ridden clients unhinged by the ‘events downtown’ and seeking to experience and live through their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as ‘the knockout,’ he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt, whose identity can be traced through twists and turns all the way back to the corpse depicted in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson.

Mirrored by a concurrently running story set in a hospital where Henry and Mr. Kindt are patients attended to by a certain Dr. Tulp, the mysteries surrounding Mr. Kindt’s past, Henry’s fate, and murders both staged and real begin to unravel in the most extraordinary ways. Substantive, stylish, and darkly comic, The Exquisite is a skillful dissection of reality, human connection, and the very nature of existence.

Ray of the Star

Set in a dream like European city reminiscent of Barcelona, along a boulevard teeming with artists who perform as living statues, comes the beautiful and frightening story of a man running from his past, a woman consumed by grief, and the forces that pursue them both. New to the city, Harry is drawn to the boulevard, and particularly to Solange, a silent, silver angel awash in Lucite tears and heartbreak. Haunted by his own mysterious tragedy but determined to woo her, Harry visits Almundo’s Store for Living Statues and begins his transformation into the golden Knight of the Woeful Countenance. A love story related in the dark, stylish noir of continental cinema and overlaid with a patina of surrealism, this is a novel where friends are also informers, street theater is the lifeblood of culture, and refuge can be found in the belly of a yellow, papier m ch submarine. As the lovers reckon with seers offering answers to insoluble questions, neighbors who take evening strolls with the dearly departed, critics who control more than artistic fate, and shoes determined to lead their wearers astray, they come to understand the price of survival and what it means to travel along the Ray of the Star. Called one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today by Paul Auster, Laird Hunt is the author of three previous, genre bending novels: The Impossibly, The Exquisite, and Indiana, Indiana. A former press officer at the United Nations and current faculty member at the University of Denver, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.