Greetings!

Dinner With Osama won the Richard Sullivan Prize, and is in your local bookstores. Two satirical stories feature George Bush, Osama and Whole Foods in Boulder; there’s a hilarious story about women’s bellies which features Charlie Rose, and several moving mother/daughter stories. And the centerpiece, “Welcome To the Torture Center, Love,” is a 90 page novella set in a southern Sudanese refugee camp, where, through the lens of a love affair between an American woman and a Dinka doctor, southern Sudanese refugees must negotiate the northern Islamic government’s genocidal war.

You’ll see why I dedicated the book to my Sudanese friends.

And don’t assume its simply violence and starvation: the love affair AND the love among the refugees renders the suffering readable.

Given the book’s timeliness, book groups will go for it, and if you’re in the Denver/Boulder area, I’ll be happy to visit.

Check out the Kirkus review below.

Warmly,

Krysl is funny, fierce, and feminist in the best possible way, and a technician of variety and resourcefulness.
I read her short stories with considerable pleasure, surprise, and admiration.

                     —John Updike

A strong story collection from  Krysl (How To Accommodate Men, 1998) showcasing a feminist, leftist, postmodernist, funny voice.

Colorado’s own Sheila, in the title story, is PC in extremis, besotted by a Boulder where you “can order arias sung for the spleen tailored to your personal astro printout and, if the acupuncturist recommends it, get a liver massage.” Her sister’s son is killed in the Towers, she’s grieving, but also scheming for nothing less than world peace. Her plan: to seduce Osama bin Laden with a meal of “Alaskan Salmon a la Tetsuya marinated in fresh basil, coriander, thyme, and grape seed oil.”  Sure enough the Evildoer, complete with dialysis machine and Koranic quotes, arrives at her place for din-din. And even while he blusters—“I’m Islam’s version of The Rock”—so smitten is he with the eats and the chef that he actually contemplates a talk with George W. Bush. If Bush will meet his requests, including backing out of Saudi Arabia, bin Laden will “call off jihad and send our women to college.” Krysl has a thing for Boulder, even more so, a life with allusions to the paintings of Mary Cassatt, and “Cherry Garcia, Pistachio Cream” is a beauteously real portrayal of mother/daughter bonding. The more political Krysl gets, the bleaker the results—think William Burroughs without the Misogyny. Her piece “Welcome to the Torture Center, Love,” concerning a night journey through the inferno that is war-torn Sudan, is a dazzler.
A compassionate and incendiary work.

                     —Kirkus Reviews