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The Speech of Flowers and Voiceless Things

by Sakina B. Fakhri

The Speech of Flowers and Voiceless Things is a novel of absurdist political satire. In this work of literary fiction, a mistranslation in a single line of poetry instigates an escalating ripple of misconstrued text that threatens to culminate in a world war over five-pronged forks. ​

This novel follows the present lives and flashbacks of an ensemble cast of translators who comprise a secret philanthropic organization (the Association of Translation Liaisons of the Altruistic States) in the Sahara Desert. These precocious orphans, culled from every corner of the Earth, struggle with the inviolable dictates against artistic creation imposed by the monomaniacal philanthropist who is their founder. Illicit acts of art inevitably devolve into mistranslations, and this string of mistranslations in the village of ATLAS implicates the second locale of the narrative, Hacylon, which is ruled by a cartoonish, tyrannical dictator.
 
Amelia Carlisle, the copiously intelligent, firm-handed Secretary General of IBIS (International Bureau of Independent States), establishes the secret village of ATLAS in hopes of a more meaningful globalized network. Astor, orphaned at the age of seven after a factory fire in Egypt, is ATLAS’s first recruit; he is eighteen years old when the novel begins and is beset by a deeply ingrained savior complex and a rampant perfectionism. Natalia, once an amanuensis for a reclusive theoretical physicist in Poland, resents the ATLASian restrictions on her knowledge and ceaselessly plots her escape. Clarence, a world-renowned journalist who is second-in-command, is burdened by the guilt of his secret betrayal of ATLAS several years prior and its ramifications for ATLAS’s impending dissolution. Ezdehar, the hired counselor, is a haunted playwright who has been brought to ATLAS after a traumatic mental breakdown in Tanzania; she contends with her compulsion to flee and write her masterpiece.

The print version of this title is temporarily out of stock.

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FREE EXCERPTS
Chapter 1: Astor
Chapter 7: Zixin

AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
Volume One
​(print edition)
edited by
Diana McClure & Sakina B. Fakhri
with illustrations by
Evgenia Barsheva

“A curated narrative arc, arranged for an alluringly unsettling, visceral reading experience."

Includes over a dozen custom illustrations

Featuring work by:
​
​Barbara Daddino, William Doreski, Laura Cesarco Eglin, Nancy Flynn, Danny Judge, Mark P. Lawley, Joseph Lisowski, Kirk Marshall, Franco Strong, Sarah T.,  Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca, Monika McGreal Viola, Susan E. Wadds, & Ferguson Williams.

Purchase now

Available at:
AMAZON
 Barnes & Noble 
or
​ Independent NYC Booksellers:
McNally Jackson Bookstore
Book Culture
Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop
with ISBN:
978-0-99-942430-8

AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
Volume Two
​(print edition)
edited by
Diana McClure & Sakina B. Fakhri
with illustrations by
Evgenia Barsheva

NOVEMBER 2018

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