The Book of the Grotesque

The Book of the Grotesque is a quilted prose transformation of a trilogy of films that are multilingual, multiracial, and focused on the shared human experience of marginalization, isolation, and longing. The novel, like the films, is 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. While the novel is rooted in the turbulent and period-specific atmosphere of Chicago, it is linked by a persistent, recurring visual and narrative tether to Paris . The narrative takes internalized migrations from Chicago to alternately find solace, transcendence, and tragedy in Paris, drawn magnetically to the city’s historical role as a sanctuary for the American creative imagination.

 

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 novel 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.​​

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