I Am An Executioner: Love Stories

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Apr 10, 2012 - Fiction - 272 pages
An explosive, funny, wildly original fiction debut: nine stories about the power of love and the love of power, two urgent human desires that inevitably, and sometimes calamitously, intertwine.
In I Am an Executioner, Rajesh Parameswaran introduces us to a cast of heroes—and antiheroes—who spring from his riotous, singular imagination. From the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, “The Infamous Bengal Ming” (he mauls his zookeeper out of affection), to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. At once glittering and savage, daring and elegant, here are wholly unforgettable tales where reality loops in Borgesian twists and shines with cinematic exuberance, by an author who promises to dazzle the universe of American fiction.


This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

From inside the book

Contents

The Strange Career of Dr Raju Gopalarajan
Am an Executioner
Narrative of Agent 974702
Bibhutibhushan Malliks Final Storyboard
Elephants in Captivity Part One
Planet Lucina Andromeda Galaxy AD 2319
Acknowledgments
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Rajesh Parameswaran is the author of I Am an Executioner: Love Stories, which The Washington Post praised as “the advent of a genuinely distinctive voice in American fiction.” Parameswaran’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, Five Chapters, and Fiction. “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan” was one of three stories for which McSweeney’s earned a National Magazine Award in 2007, and it was reprinted in The Best American Magazine Writing. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and lives in New York City.

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