The Book of X - Paperback

by Sarah Rose Etter (Author)

A surreal exploration of one woman's life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad men.

The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday--school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents--with the surreal--rivers of thighs, men for sale and fields of throats--Cassie's realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

Author Biography

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of RIPE, and The Book of X, winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award. Her short fiction collection, Tongue Party, was selected by Deb Olin Unferth to be published as the winner of the 2011 Caketrain Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in TIME, Guernica, BOMB, Gulf Coast, The Cut, VICE, and more. She has been awarded residences at the Jack Kerouac House, the Disquiet International program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan Writing Residency in Iceland. She earned her B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and her M.F.A. in Fiction from Rosemont College. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.