Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

What makes these dozen stories really pop are the people around whom they are centered. Fu is a master mixer of the speculative, the witchy, and the real.Ī speculative short story collection ideal for streaming audiences accustomed to Black Mirror and The Haunting of Hill House. Think: sexuality, guilt, contradictions, drama! 12 stories about macabre, beautifully dark images (not unlike a Lana Del Rey song). There are surprises lurking in these narratives, whether it is a quick final plot twist or unexpected peculiarity. The success of Kim Fu’s stories is the element of the unexpected. Vivid and surreal, readers of Carmen Maria Machado will enjoy this collection. There’s something for everyone in this outstanding collection, which cements Fu as one of the most exciting short story writers in contemporary fiction. Fu brings magical realism to exciting heights.Ī lovely, new collection of eclectic tales.

The strange and wonderful define Kim Fu’s story collection, where the line between fantasy and reality fades in and out, elusive and beckoning.īold. Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll a runaway bride encounters a sea monster a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. “The strange and wonderful define Kim Fu’s story collection, where the line between fantasy and reality fades in and out, elusive and beckoning.” - The New York Times Book Review Magazine, and Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2022Ģ023 Pacific Northwest Book Prize Winner & Longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates PrizeĪ BuzzFeed, WIRED, LitHub, ALTA, and PureWow Best Book of Winter An NPR, Book Riot, Chicago Public Library, Tor.com, South China Morning Post, Ms.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu