By Mark Jarman
From the author of 19 Knives and My White Planet comes a brilliant suite of stories built around music and travel. Whether it’s a band coming apart at the ruins of Pompeii, or tours through Napoli’s “volcanic dust and volcanic drugs and jackal-headed bedlam” or a nostalgic stroll past the homeless in Victoria’s inner harbour while “gentle Tunisian techno” rides the breeze above addicts as weighted as Shakespearean characters … “lit rock and tiny chalice hidden under his shirt, get it all, draw every wisp of the wreath and heavy is the head that wears the crown, that lights the lighter.” Steppenwolf drifts from a car radio as “an ambulance siren and lights fly our street … a flashing mime show of grief’s rocket.” Or we’re in Iceland — or Denmark — “somewhere seriously lunar and attractive,” and the band is spending wheelbarrows of cash the record execs didn’t give them. Or it’s the Sunset Boulevard, the Viper Room, a bar in Butte, Montana, and Johnny Cash in Tijuana.
The five stories that comprise Czech Techno are replete with the sizzle and jump we have come to expect from a Mark Jarman story. And matters of the heart are never far away, weaving through these tales like a knife blade through sand.
PRAISE FOR MARK JARMAN’S WRITING:
“He writes with immediacy and verve, cutting out the unnecessary to leave only the most vivid.” — Literary Review of Canada
“a brilliant work . . . a postmodern Canadian classic”
— National Post
“relentlessly, dizzyingly energetic”
— Globe & Mail
Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. His novel, Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction. His work has been published widely in magazines and journals, including The Walrus, Canadian Geographic, Brick, and American Short Story. He has twice won the Maclean-Hunter Endowment Award and the Jack Hodgins Fiction Prize. Mark is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, and currently teaches at the University of New Brunswick. His Selected Stories is forthcoming from Biblioasis Press.
