I Am an Executioner: Love Stories Hardback - 2012

Excerpt

THE INFAMOUS BENGAL MING

The one clear thing I can say about Wednesday, the worst and most amazing day of my life, is this: it started out beautifully. I woke up with the summer dawn, when the sky goes indigo-gray, and the air's empty coolness begins to fill with a tacky, enveloping warmth. I could hear Saskia and Maharaj purring to each other at the far end of my compound. I'd had to listen to their cooing and screeching sex noises all night, but it didn't bother me. I didn't know why yet, but I realized: I was over it. Saskia could sleep with every tiger in the world but me, and I wouldn't mind.

I stretched and smacked my mouth and licked my lips, tasting the familiar odors of the day. Already, I somehow sensed that this morning would be different from all the other mornings of my life. On the far side of the wall, hippos mucked and splashed, and off in the distance the monkeys and birds who had been up since predawn darkness started their morning chorus in earnest, their caws and kee-kees and caroo- caroo-caroos echoing out over the breadth of our little kingdom. These were the same sounds I heard morning after morning, but this morning, it was all more beautiful than ever; yes, this morning was different. It took me a little while to puzzle out the reason, but once I did, it was unmistakable:

I was in love.

It wasn't with one of the tigers in my compound-no, I had exhausted the possibilities of our small society long ago, and other than Saskia, there hadn't been any new arrivals in years. In fact, the object of my love wasn't another tiger at all. I was in love with my keeper, Kitch.

I know it sounds strange. It kind of caught me by surprise, too, but there really wasn't any avoiding the conclusion.

And it was all the stranger because I had known Kitch for years. When I was a cub, he had been something like an assistant to my first keepers. He wore wire-frame glasses then, and he was skinny and nervous. It was amusing to see him struggle to keep a clear path between himself and the compound door, in case he needed to make a quick escape. It's true what they say about us: we can smell fear, and that's why I noticed him. I was nervous around people then, too, and his manner piqued my particular interest.

Over the years, other keepers came and went, tigers disappeared and new ones arrived, but Kitch was always there. He grew a moustache. His cheeks got round and his belly filled out. His hair went thinner and thinner every time he took off his cap. He shaved his moustache. He lost the wariness that I had once found so intriguing.

His manner changed, his appearance changed, but he was always the same sweet Kitch. And that Wednesday I had woken up and realized: Kitch. Kitch! I love Kitch. Realizing I loved Kitch was like realizing that a bone you have enjoyed chewing for months is actually the bone of your worst enemy. The bone hasn't changed, nor your enjoyment of it, but suddenly things are seen with a whole new perspective. Actually, that's a very negative example, but the point is this: I had just discovered a deep and endless love for the best friend I had ever had in my life.

I should probably clarify. This wasn't the sort of love like when you see a hot new cat and can't keep your claws off her. I didn't love Kitch like I had loved Saskia, not with the same, shall we say, roaring passion. This love wasn't as agitating.

This was a different love. Every morning, when the big metal doors opened in the fiberglass rock, and pound after pound of cow meat and fresh organs came slithering down the passageway, whose face was there in the dark distance, shovel in hand? Kitch's. When Maharaj growled and got restless and came looking for a fight, who was the first to hear his shrieky howls, to fire a water hose and scare him off me? Kitch. I was inexhaustibly interesting to him, and he was an inexhaustible curiosity and a comfort and joy to me.

I think I'd call that love.

And once I realized I loved Kitch, everything else in the world seemed to make so much perfect indescribable nonsensical sense. Saskia rejecting me; fiberglass walls; lonely, zoo-wandering old ladies; little children eating caramel corn; cockatoos and monkeys; and everything under the sun, so funny and strange, and I just loved it all. I had food and water and friends and Kitch. I really didn't need much more than this, did I?

It's a little embarrassing even to think back on it. That was Wednesday morning.

It didn't take long for things to take a turn for the worse. The first sign was when I walked to the fiberglass rock down which my food usually came slithering, leaving a trail of red, wet glisten. This morning I walked to the rock, looked up, and waited. Nothing came. I sniffed and I waited. I closed my eyes and opened them.

No food.

I waited some more. And I waited and I waited. I started to play a game: I would shut my eyes for a few moments at a time, and while my eyes were closed I would convince myself that as soon as I opened them, the food would be there. I kept them closed for longer periods each time, but the food never arrived.

Now I was very hungry, and when I'm hungry my head hurts. In fact, it pounds. I shut my eyes firmly and tried to sleep it away, but the sun was quickly becoming unbearably hot-this was the middle of August-and I didn't want to go in search of shade lest I miss the food when it finally came, and Maharaj, finished with his own meal but greedy still, would come and pilfer it.

So I lay down right there, under the sun, and tried to quiet the pounding in my head. By this time the people had started to arrive-not just a few early morning walkers, but thick hordes of people, huge summer-vacation swarms, three or four deep, five or six herds of summer campers alone, plus tourists and regulars.

Normally, I don't mind the people who visit the zoo. They have their business, I have mine. They come, watch for a few minutes, point and stare, talk about me, eat their ice creams, whatever, I don't care. But today there were so many of them, and they were so loud, and I was so hungry. My head was pounding and I was just trying to relax, to stay calm and wait for my food, but they kept talking; and some little kid started to scream, "Wake up! Wake up, tiger! Wake up!" And then a whole chorus of kids joined him. "Wake up, tiger! Wake up!"

I might have been able eventually to block them out and fall asleep, but right then I smelled Saskia, and that smell made me perk up. She was walking directly toward me, with that little sashay, that little walk of hers. I loved to contemplate the fluffy patch of white fur right beneath her tail, and the way her tail brushed over it lightly as she swayed from side to side to side. As I said, I was over her. I was totally fine with the idea of her together with Maharaj, fucking Maharaj. But that didn't mean I had to stop appreciating her walk, that didn't mean I was prohibited from inhaling a deep whiff of her gorgeous aroma as she ambled toward me.

I purred to her, very casually. Just a "Hello there, Saskia" kind of purr. I waited for her to return the greeting, but she didn't even look at me. She walked past me like I wasn't even there.

Now, this annoyed me. It's one thing for her to sleep with Maharaj. That's her business and her prerogative. But to ignore me like that, as if we were no one to each other-that was too much. I felt a little stupid for having let myself get carried away with admiring her walk and everything, and just to show her that she had put me out of sorts, I snarled. It was a small snarl, accompanied by a little swat of my paw: a warning swat. There was no way I could have made contact. But when she saw me lift my paw, she jumped around and roared so loudly that I swear to God I almost pissed right where I stood. All right, I actually did piss. Then she walked away as cool as could be.

I could hear the schoolkids laughing at me now, but I ignored them and curled around and lay down again. Then I heard a familiar noise in the bushes, and I started to get nervous because it was the sound of Maharaj. Maharaj is a massive beast of a cat. He has almost three times my bulk, so he makes a lot of noise when he moves. He must have heard Saskia's growl and was coming to check out the situation.

Maharaj took his time, moving real slow, hefting his huge body through the brush, and I could smell him now-it was definitely Maharaj, so the fear and the pressure were kind of building up inside me. I was debating: should I try to get away, and risk attracting his attention; or should I sit still and stay as quiet as possible and hope he'd ignore me?

I decided to make a move for it, but this turned out to be the wrong decision. As soon as I got up and started to walk, I heard Maharaj break into a run, and in three quick bounds-boom, boom, boom-his heavy body was on top of mine and his claws were in my back and his teeth were sunk deep into my ass.

I screamed and writhed, but he kept me pinned down for thirty seconds or a minute, during which time I heard him fart, casual, loud and stinky, as if to demonstrate how relaxed he was, how little effort it took him to keep me locked down and in pain. Finally, he released me, as calmly as you please. He got up and started to walk away. (He didn't even look at me-just like Saskia.) He paused in front of the metal door in the fiberglass rock where I usually got my food. He crouched down and sent out a fat stream of piss. That smell would stick to that rock for days, and he knew it.

At this point I was thinking: Kitch. I just want Kitch. I just want him to show up and salvage this day and restore it to its original promise. I want Kitch to bring me my food and wash my rock. I want Kitch to hang around for a few minutes and keep Maharaj away from me. I want to hear Kitch's voice flattering me and telling me what a good cat I was, and telling me what to do. Actually, it would have been fine if Kitch didn't do any of these things. He could have forgotten the food and said not a word to me, for all I cared. I just wanted him to be there. I just wanted to see his face for a few seconds, just to look at him. In fact, even thinking about Kitch's pink face made me feel better, gave me a feeling of hope and calm, and made the throbbing in my ass and my head fade a little. He would be here soon, I knew it.

I settled down again and closed my eyes. The noise of the crowd also settled, finally, into a distant hum and chatter like it usually did, like a sonic blanket over the world, and in a little while I managed to fall asleep.

When I woke up it was gray and cool, a bank of clouds having moved in over the sun. My headache was better, but now my whole torso ached from hunger. I sniffed around the metal door, but there was still nothing there but the odor of Maharaj's catpiss.

Kitch still hadn't arrived. I couldn't believe it.

At that moment, I heard a familiar noise wafting over the moat that separated me from the visitors:

The river is chilly and the river is cold, Hallelujah
Michael, row the boat ashore, Hallelujah.

Oh, God, I thought. Not the "row-your-boat" lady, not today of all days. She sat down on the bench, sweatered and stinking, hair astray, grinning with her broken teeth. I could smell her from where I sat!

I roared at her instinctively, but she didn't shut up. In fact, she let out a whoop and a holler and sang all the louder.

The river is deep and the river is wide, Hallelujah
Milk and honey on the other side, Hallelujah.

I got up and paced back and forth, pausing every now and again to glare, but she wasn't intimidated in the least. She sang and she sang and she sang. After maybe half an hour, the singing faded into soft, incoherent chatter, until finally she slumped low on the bench and started to snore.

Still, the day dragged on, and the sun had barely even crested in the sky. I felt a painful knock! knock! knock! in my head, and looked up to see the teenage zoo attendant banging his litter stick against the bench, trying to rouse the row-your-boat lady. Finally, she woke up and walked quietly away.

Kitch, I kept thinking. Kitch Kitch Kitch Kitch Kitch.

And just then, I saw Maharaj rising over the hill again, moving steady and fast, fairly bristling for another confrontation. What had I done this time? I kept repeating Kitch's name like a mantra. My head was about to explode into a million pieces. It hurt so bad I could barely move it from one side to the other, and Maharaj was moving in for the kill, ready to carve up my rump and shit on my lair for good measure. And just at that moment, just as the pressure in my head was reaching the point where my brains felt like they would liquefy and boil and shoot from my ears in jets of steam, just as Maharaj crouched down for the pounce, just as all these things were about to happen, the people door creaked open and who was there but Kitch!

It was really him, his red face aglow in the sunlight, and I almost jumped into the air with delight. Maharaj turned and galloped away to hide. The pain in my head melted into some pink, loving bliss. Where was my hunger? Where was all the gloom and trouble of the day? It was all gone. Kitch was here!

I paced back and forth and meowed, like a lovesick lynx. I ran around in a circle and bit my tail. I peed in a long, hot stream, with a big grin on my face. I paced up and down and up and down again, then I rolled on my back and let my tongue loll out. And then I popped upright and roared. It was Kitch! Yes, Kitch was here! And I loved him! And he was here!

Little did I know, the most horrible thing was yet to happen.

Kitch was still standing near the door. In fact, he seemed, for some reason, unnaturally cautious. He hadn't advanced toward me at all, nor had he called out to return my greetings, and that's when I realized there was someone with him-an older man with thick glasses, and wearing white rubber gloves on his hands. Kitch began, finally, to walk to one side of me, slowly, with caution, while trying to shield this other, nervous, man from my view.

Media reviews

“Delectable . . . Enchanting, engaging . . . Parameswaran’s debut short story collection takes tried and true themes like identity and heritage and weaves them into a spectacular new tapestry. . . . No matter the subject, all are written with consistently smooth and elegant prose. [His] writing remains inviting and yet causally informative for anyone unfamiliar with minute details about Indian-American culture. Thankfully, the end result is not sappy, unnecessarily historical or frustratingly pedantic. The stories have the merit of keeping the reader’s attention. . . . [A] worthy addition to your summer reading list [and] a book that cements Parameswaran’s place as a writer to watch.” —Ryan Strong, New York Daily News 
 
“Bold and fiercely imaginative, captivating and surprising . . . Parameswaran has put together a selection of love stories that are anything but typical. His stories range from the thoughts of a fugitive tiger on an unintentional killing spree, to a geriatric love triangle played out in film, to interspecies relations on an alien planet where killing your mate is the norm. Each story speaks of love in its own way: violent, tender, thoughtless, fleeting, strong, empty, natural, romantic, enduring. How is love expressed? And what does that expression lead to? Love is ubiquitous, but it’s also incredibly diverse, as the characters in I Am an Executioner show. . . . Each story draws you in and keeps you there, enthralled, to the end. . . . Dark and intense, quiet and strong, a fascinating study of love in all its forms.”—Leah Sims, Portland Book Review 
 
“I Am an Executioner has the power to change your definition of love. Imaginative and rich in their prose, yet darkly humorous and at times stomach-turning, each story is unique in its concept and process. In fact, the title describes the author well—he is a superb executioner of short fiction. This powerful collection is not for the faint of heart.” —Vivienne Finche, Sacramento News & Review 
 
“When you read [the stories in I Am an Executioner] in succession, noting the subtle ways in which they play off each other, what emerges is a distinct sensibility and storytelling flair. [It] bears the subtitle ‘Love Stories,’ but this is not the stuff of conventional romance: layers of doubt and betrayal run through these stories, even the ones that are about genuinely caring relationships. At least four of the pieces involve people hiding significant things from their spouses, but one never gets a sense of repetition; instead, it’s as if the angle of a mirror has been slightly altered to give us a new perspective on love and its possibilities. . . . This is a difficult book to categorise. It could be said that it is about passionate and duplicitous lovers, about narrators who are unreliable and deeply perceptive in turn, about animals and extraterrestrials who are strangers to people, and about people who are strangers to each other. But ultimately, a clinical listing of ‘abouts’ is an inadequate way to describe such a varied yet organically linked collection. This is among the most stimulating story collections I’ve read in a long while, and a reminder of the possibilities that still exist for short fiction in a jaded, post-post-modern world.” —Jai Arjun Singh, The Sunday Guardian 
 
“Don’t be misled by the subtitle of this offbeat debut collection: for Parameswaran, ‘love’ bespeaks deadly passion. These tales, with their grotesque imagery and bathetic reversals in tone, [contain] flashes of brilliance. Parameswaran shows a mastery of perspective and voice that hints at greater things to come.” —David Evans, Financial Times (May 26, 2012)
 
“The aphorism says a ‘thin line’ divides love and hate, but in fact they operate more like two circles in a Venn diagram with a thin sliver of overlap. All of the stories in I Am an Executioner live in that borderland where love and hate intersect. His stories spring from an incredibly diverse group of characters. . . . Phenomenal.” —Catie Disabato, Full Stop 
 
“This smorgasbord of stories explores love’s dark underbelly with a remarkably broad purview. . . .The title story is deeply affecting, at times devastating. Parameswaran has a sharp sense of what makes a story work, his stories reveal their mysteries gradually, and very cleverly zero in on the heart of the matter. . . . Unsettling but highly inventive.” —Nauman Khalid, Huffington Post UK 
 
“Love in Parameswaran’s debut takes a darker, less expected form. In nine tales, [he] presents the world through the eyes of the misunderstood, the murderous, the megalomaniacs, and the mad. In these tales, tenderness blends in disturbing seamlessness with bloodthirst, and violence is carried out with quiet intimacy. Yet these stories, as the collection’s cover suggests, are not without a certain strange humor. They are not bleak, nor are they sadistic . . . Parameswaran creates a tone all his own, something like an even blend of Roald Dahl as he wrote for children and Roald Dahl as he wrote for adults. Even as his stories twist and turn, mounting in horror, I can imagine them paired with the whimsical illustrations of Quentin Blake. . . . The author’s ability as a sculptor of the written word is dazzling. . . . [His] blend of horror, tenderness, and humor works as it does because beneath its violence and wit lies compassion for even the most deeply disturbed among us. Despite their eccentric appearances, these are but stories of universal human experience, twisted slightly. . . . Triumphant.” —Mia Nakaji Monnier, Hyphen Magazine

“Dangerous, misunderstood creatures—a man-eating tiger, a wild elephant, and the title executioner, to name just a few—populate Parameswaran’s debut collection of stories, [which] offers a fiercely creative vision of what it takes to stay alive. As the title suggests, where there is love, death is near, [but] these stories are more than well-executed variations on a theme. In some of these stories’ finest moments, Parameswaran patiently teases out the most tender, human impulses of his characters—from the classified agent who struggles with her urge to simply to tell her husband about her day to the quack doctor [who] derives a real glimmer of joy from believing he has ‘helped, not harmed’ a fellow being. Death may be inescapable, but life is still a tender thing to be savored. . . . These stories are without fail brightly original, and despite his dark themes, there’s a real levity in Parameswaran’s writing. This is a world of many fools, but few villains—a world where tragedy and farce are plentiful but evil is debatable: for every death or disappearance in this collection, there’s a wink.” — Mythili Rao, The Daily Beast 
 
“A compulsive and infectious narrative restlessness marks Parameswaran’s first collection. And although tagged with the subtitle ‘Love Stories,’ Parameswaran’s work demonstrates about the same relationship to traditional literary debuts as the insects in his strange and beautiful story ‘On the Banks of Table River [Planet Lucina, Andromeda Galaxy, AD 2319]’ do to the earthlings who have colonized their planet. His storytellers are wedded to a 21st-century experimentalism, continually uncaging themselves from realist fiction. From tigers and elephants [to] a man in a yellowing photograph [and] a fiercely committed spy, they form an unpredictable and often charming cavalcade, revealing both the particularity of what they perceive and the extent of what they misunderstand, or simply miss. Raptly attentive to their own narratives, they gradually paint us into corners; we must peer around and above them. . . . Parameswaran’s characters, humans and animals both, find themselves puzzled by love and power, devotion and detachment. [His] stories combine narrative brio, ringing voices and beguilingly looped plots. . . . Realist revelation and postmodern speculation proceed in parallel. . . .These are very much stories that make us ‘wonder the universe.’” —Chandrahas Choudhury, The New York Times Book Review 
 
“Parameswaran’s prose has the tender-savage texture of a rare steak veined with blood.”—Nina Martyris, The Millions 
 
“Compelling. . . . In Parameswaran’s universe, some of the people and places may seem familiar; others are quite obviously figments of an imagination that freewheels in style. Each story is distinct and intricately crafted, with characters come to life with his storytelling, which is a wonderfully balanced potpourri of morbidity, humour and sensitivity. There are no loose ends, no repeated voices. It’s almost as though Parameswaran, who was born in India but raised in America since he was a baby, set himself a new challenge with each story. . . . All those who had resigned themselves to fictional Indian immigrants being predictable, boring and flat, pour yourselves a drink and raise a toast to Parameswaran. Desis haven’t been this much fun in the pages of a book in years. . . . [A] very impressive debut.” —Deepanjana Pal, Mumbai Boss 
 
“Strange, magical love stories . . . Worlds of unrestrained creativity . . . Very dark and yet very funny.” —Tarra Gaines, Culture Map Houston

“In spite of its title, death, not love, is the subject of Rajesh Parameswaran’s debut collection. His tales play with mortality so frequently that doom and destruction merely become props in a series of dark, comedic circumstances. . . . The author expertly outfits each protagonist with a distinctive inner monologue that feels richly authentic. . . . Less a commentary on the desensitized nature of the modern world, Parameswaran is comparing the awkward, inescapable facets of everyday life—work, romance, familial exchanges—with the awkward, inescapable reality of death. I Am an Executioner won’t be tossed around at tea parties, but it’s a heck of a way for an author to make an entrance—if, admittedly, a bloody one. Four stars.” —Josh Davis, Time Out New York

“[I Am an Executioner] opens with ‘The Infamous Bengal Ming,’ narrated by a tiger who expresses affection for his keeper in the only language available to him, a fatal combination of mauling and love-biting; he then escapes the zoo to commit other acts of mayhem, under which lies a misunderstood tenderness. This tour de force sets the tone and the stage for these dark, rollickingly imaginative stories in which the powers of love and savagery are loosed upon each other again and again. . . . Parameswaran is a dazzlingly versatile stylist and the conceits and voices here are varied and evocative. An inventive, impressive and witty book.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 
 
“The nine stories that make up I Am an Executioner: Love Stories are virtuosic, summoning some of the wildness of the tiger that graces the cover. . . . The stories aren’t experimental so much as they are vibrantly, raucously creative. . . . Like a great poet working in rhyme, [Parameswaran] can employ established forms to startling effect. . . . fabulously inventive and heterogeneous.” —Jacob Silverman, Capital New York 
 
“Masterful.. . . abundantly inventive, deceptively cunning, and fearless. I Am an Executioner marks the advent of a genuinely distinctive voice in American fiction. In this intriguing alternate universe, exotic aliens turn out to be surly, lovelorn teens, zoo animals fall murderously in love with their captors, and elephants engage in violent clan feuds worthy of Elizabethan drama. Parameswaran has the knack for mimicry and ventriloquism of a born outsider, guilelessly transporting the reader into a Swiftian upside-down-land where the rules of logic and of sense have been temporarily suspended. One character has ‘the air of someone who had been dropped here from another planet, fascinated but flummoxed’; another observes that ‘children are monsters, strange versions of ourselves.’ All of these narrators—animal, human or alien—feel themselves to be strangers, exiles from the familiar and the mundane. ‘We are just visitors,’ says one, of the world around him. ‘None of it is our own.’ This gift for the unusual perspective results in a debut collection of startling freshness and force.” —Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post 
 
“This collection fizzes with a mesmeric, restless energy. Rajesh Parameswaran makes us believe the unbelievable—in his hands the fantastic becomes intimate and human.”—Tash Aw, author of The Harmony Silk Factory

“Lethal innocence and the uncanny pairing of brutality and tenderness [shapes] Parameswaran’s macabre love stories. A thoughtful zoo tiger is only trying to express love when he inadvertently goes on a killing spree. The thin line between freedom and imprisonment is traced to provocative effect in a story told by a captured elephant, though the footnotes written by her alleged translator, a curious sort of elephant-man obsessed with suicide, take over her narrative. Venturing into Kafka and Borges territory, Parameswaran writes pristine, even serene prose that flows in disquieting counterpoint to the grotesqueness of most of his tales, with one sterling exception, the heartbreaking, Chekhovian story about an aging art director helplessly in love with the wife of a world-famous filmmaker. A potent, haunting, darkly sublime, and completely compassionate debut collection.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“In the staggering title story, the awkward, love-starved narrator maneuvers between his day job finishing off convicted criminals and his home life, where he tries unsuccessfully to reassure his new wife that he’s not as bad as his profession would imply. His poetic, if exaggerated, Indian English creates its own cadence just as his compulsive justification creates its own logic . . . Parameswaran should be applauded for pushing the limits of genre and for the searing brilliance of his language. . . . [An] admirably risky debut collection.”  —Publishers Weekly

“Parameswaran writes like a demon. . . . When you read this, you will be telling everyone you know about this book.”  —Jason Rice, Three Guys One Book

“To claim that an author has written inventive stories about love conjures up many possibilities, but none will compare to the fertile imaginings of Rajesh Parameswaran. His debut collection, I Am an Executioner, is filled with the voices of astonishing characters—a misunderstood tiger, a strip mall con man who opens a medical clinic with only library texts to guide him, an executioner, a surveillance agent, a pompous railway manager, and more—whose pitch-perfect stories recalibrate the notion of love and power with dark humor and unbearable tenderness.” —Walter Mosley
 
“I Am an Executioner is intelligent and hilarious and wildly imaginative. Parameswaran explores with great delicacy that fraught line between provincial life and modern times. There are traces of Chekhov in his writing. These stories have the power to endure.” —Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free
 
“Stories that are savagely funny, stories that haunt and sear and stun, stories so original they defy categorization—above all, stories generously laden with sheer reading pleasure: I Am an Executioner is a brilliant and spellbinding collection.” —Manil Suri, author of The Death of Vishnu

“Brilliantly unnerving, wickedly funny, and deeply satisfying. These are ferocious stories about the power of love both to save and destroy, and what can happen to us when we succumb to our true animal natures. Rajesh Parameswaran writes with elegance and style and a fiendishly seductive wit that will take your breath away. An astonishingly original debut by a writer to reckon with.” —Julie Otsuka, author of The Buddha in the Attic
 
“The characters in this first collection, including a frustrated Bengal tiger and a woman gamely managing Thanksgiving dinner with her husband sprawled dead on the floor, suggest an offbeat temperament at work. The venues where these stories have appeared—e.g., McSweeney’s, Granta, and Zoetrope—suggest talent at work as well. Great expectations!” —Library Journal 
 
“I Am an Executioner gets the pulse racing from word one. I love Rajesh because his last name is even more impossible than my own, and because he has redefined the American short story for me. Bravo!” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
 
“Wonderful stories—like small, deft carnivals entering our desert cities and cranky towns to, for a while, muster us into feeling, resolution, and happiness, before they go on their way.  We can't help but be grateful for them.” —Charlie Smith, author of Word Comix: Poems