The Ace of Lightning
Stories
Published on 7. March 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-57366-058-7 (ISBN)
Description
Stephen-Paul Martin's The Ace of Lightning is a series of interconnected stories focused on a turning point in Western history: the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria which triggered World War I, and the mysterious circumstances that led Gavrilo Princip to shoot and kill the heir apparent to one of Europe's most powerful empires.
Far from being a conventional work of historical fiction, Martin's collection asks readers to think about what truly constitutes history. What would the past look like if history was written under the influence of Mad Magazine and The Twilight Zone? What happens when the assassination in Sarajevo becomes "the assassination in Sarajevo," when Gavrilo Princip becomes "Gavrilo Princip," when the past and the present shape a textual future that looks suspiciously like a past that never was and a present that never is?
Far from being a conventional work of historical fiction, Martin's collection asks readers to think about what truly constitutes history. What would the past look like if history was written under the influence of Mad Magazine and The Twilight Zone? What happens when the assassination in Sarajevo becomes "the assassination in Sarajevo," when Gavrilo Princip becomes "Gavrilo Princip," when the past and the present shape a textual future that looks suspiciously like a past that never was and a present that never is?
Reviews / Votes
Stephen-Paul Martin is a longtime, masterful postmodern storyteller, whose characters' meditations often blend together with his narrators' essay-like ruminations in unexpected, comic, recursive, explosive, and subtle ways. Delineating a sinister, deeply absurd world which has both annihilated the capacity for laughter and repeatedly, urgently demands it, The Ace of Lightning takes us inside historical necessity, where time is fluid and Martin's comic imagination runs wonderfully rampant."" - Mel Freilicher, author of The Encyclopedia of Rebels and The Unmaking of Americans: 7 LivesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Normal
United States
Publishing group
The University of Alabama Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
1 black & white figure
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-57366-058-7 (9781573660587)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Stephen-Paul Martin
Ace of Lightning
E-Book
03/2017
1st Edition
University of Alabama Press
€48.99
Available for download
Person
Stephen-Paul Martin is editor of Central Park, a journal of the arts and social theory, and author of several collections of fiction, including Changing the Subject, The Possibility of Music, and Instead of Confusion. Martin's writings have appeared in more than 200 periodicals over the past 30 years, in several different languages. One of his short story collections, The Gothic Twilight, was nominated for the National Critics Circle Fiction Award in 1993.