The Book of the Grotesque

The Book of the Grotesque is a quilted transformation of a critically celebrated trilogy of 21st Century films that are multilingual, multiracial, and focused on the shared human experience of marginalization, isolation, and longing. The emergent film and its accompanying novel provide a portrait of Chicago, which has been called the most American of American cities. Its title is drawn from Sherwood Anderson’s "Winesburg, Ohio," a landmark work written in Chicago. 

 

The Book of the Grotesque is the name of a handwritten manuscript by an elderly man who never found the courage to seek a publisher. He has been writing the work for so long that he’s not sure if the characters are imagined, based on real persons he’s known, or the product of dreams. Each of the characters clings to a Truth that helps them to justify their existences, and it is the clutching onto these truths that make them Grotesques.

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This noir undertaking is a detective story set largely against the backdrop of the 1919 Chicago race riots. It follows an ensemble of characters whose lives intersect during a heatwave that breaks into violence, exploring themes of longing, systemic inequity, and the little epiphanies that will grace even the most marginalized of lives.​​​