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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. Read the first few chapters for FREE here.
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AZURE: A JOURNAL OF LITERARY THOUGHT, VOL. 1Edited by Diana McClure & Sakina B. Fakhri / With illustrations by Evgenia Barsheva
“A curated narrative arc, arranged for an alluringly unsettling, visceral reading experience."
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.
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 |
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AZURE: A JOURNAL OF LITERARY THOUGHT, VOL. 2Edited by Sakina B. Fakhri & Diana McClure / With illustrations by Evgenia Barsheva
"A literary, lyrical, dense, experimental and witty reading experience."
Featuring work by James Blevins, Susan Brennan, V.B. Borjen, Anhvu Buchanan and Brent Piller, Natalie Crick, Barbara Daddino, Alan Flurry, Daniel Freeman, Lara Lillibridge, JWM Morgan, Janet M. Powers, M.K. Rainey, Sam Reese, Malorie Seeley-Sherwood, Freya Shipley, Sarah T., & Dan Wood
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AZURE: A JOURNAL OF LITERARY THOUGHT, VOL. 3
Edited by Sakina B. Fakhri & Diana McClure / With illustrations by Evgenia Barsheva
Featuring work by Beatriz Seelaender, Twixt, Joanne B. Mulcahy, Kenneth Hanes, Ouita Rogers, Linda Dennard, Debbie Fox, M. Ann Reed, Omar Sabbagh, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Don Dussault, Christien Gholson, Franco Strong, Ben Colandrea, Devon Ortega, JayJay Conrad, Logo Wei, Osamase Ekhator, Vivek V. Narayan, Melinda Giordano
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