Books by Jesse Ball
DIVERS GAME
by Jesse Ball
From the inimitable mind of award-winning author Jesse Ball, a novel about an unsettlingly familiar society that has renounced the concept of equality—and the devastating consequences of unmitigated power
The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavor. The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives.
The Divers’ Game is a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth: we must change or our world will collapse.
What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture? The Divers’ Game explores the consequences of violence through two festivals, and through the dramatic and excruciating examination of a woman’s final moments.
Brilliantly constructed and achingly tender, The Divers’ Game shatters the notion of common decency as the binding agent between individuals, forcing us to consider whether compassion is intrinsic to the human experience. With his signature empathy and ingenuity, Jesse Ball’s latest work solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary fiction’s most mesmerizing talents.
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The Divers' Game: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
From the inimitable mind of award-winning author Jesse Ball, a novel about an unsettlingly familiar society that has renounced the concept of equality—and the devastating consequences of unmitigated power
The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavor. The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives.
The Divers’ Game is a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth: we must change or our world will collapse.
What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture? The Divers’ Game explores the consequences of violence through two festivals, and through the dramatic and excruciating examination of a woman’s final moments.
Brilliantly constructed and achingly tender, The Divers’ Game shatters the notion of common decency as the binding agent between individuals, forcing us to consider whether compassion is intrinsic to the human experience. With his signature empathy and ingenuity, Jesse Ball’s latest work solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary fiction’s most mesmerizing talents.
Copies
No copies available.
Census
by Jesse Ball
NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY
The New York Times • Buzzfeed • Esquire • Nylon • The Boston Globe • The Huffington Post • The Chicago Tribune • The Rumpus • The AV Club • Southern Living • The Millions • The Chicago Reader • Kirkus • Publishers Weekly • NPR
A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns
When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.
Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?
Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.
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Census: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY
The New York Times • The Chicago Reader • Nylon • The Boston Globe • The Huffington Post • The Rumpus • The AV Club • Southern Living • The Millions • Buzzfeed • Esquire • Publishers Weekly
A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns
When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.
Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?
Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.
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Samedi the Deafness (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Jesse Ball
One morning in the park James Sim discovers a man, crumpled on the ground, stabbed in the chest. In the man's last breath, he whispers his confession: Samedi.
What follows is a spellbinding game of cat and mouse as James is abducted, brought to an asylum, and seduced by a woman in yellow. Who is lying? What is Samedi? And what will happen on the seventh day?
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The Way Through Doors (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Jesse Ball
With his debut novel, Samedi the Deafness, Jesse Ball emerged as one of our most extraordinary new writers. Now, Ball returns with this haunting tale of love and storytelling, hope and identity.
When Selah Morse sees a young woman get hit by a speeding taxicab, he rushes her to the hospital. The girl has lost her memory; she is delirious and has no identification, so Selah poses as her boyfriend. She is released into his care, but the doctor charges him to keep her awake, and to help her remember her past. Through the long night, he tells her stories, inventing and inventing, trying to get closer to what might be true, and hoping she will recognize herself in one of his tales. Offering up moments of pure insight and unexpected, exuberant humor, The Way Through Doorsdemonstrates Jesse Ball's great artistry and gift for and narrative.
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The Curfew (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Jesse Ball
William and Molly lead a life of small pleasures, riddles at the kitchen table, and games of string and orange peels. All around them a city rages with war. When the uprising began, William’s wife was taken, leaving him alone with their young daughter. They keep their heads down and try to remain unnoticed as police patrol the streets, enforcing a curfew and arresting citizens. But when an old friend seeks William out, claiming to know what happened to his wife, William must risk everything. He ventures out after dark, and young Molly is left to play, reconstructing his dangerous voyage, his past, and their future. An astounding portrait of fierce love within a world of random violence, The Curfew is a mesmerizing feat of literary imagination.
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Silence Once Begun: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
From the celebrated author of The Curfew (“A spare masterwork of dystopian fiction” —The New York Times Book Review), Jesse Ball’s Silence Once Begun is an astonishing novel of unjust conviction, lost love, and a journalist’s obsession.
Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as the “Narito Disappearances,” the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated—but he refuses to speak. Even as his parents, brother, and sister come to visit him, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. Our narrator, a journalist named Jesse Ball, is grappling with mysteries of his own when he becomes fascinated by the case. Why did Sotatsu confess? Why won’t he speak? Who is Jito Joo? As Ball interviews Sotatsu’s family, friends, and jailers, he uncovers a complex story of heartbreak, deceit, honor, and chance.
Wildly inventive and emotionally powerful, Silence Once Begun is a devastating portrayal of a justice system compromised, and evidence that Jesse Ball is a voraciously gifted novelist working at the height of his powers.
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Silence Once Begun: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Jesse Ball
Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as “the Narito Disappearances,” the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by one Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman.
Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated, but he refuses to speak. Even as his family comes to visit, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. And as a journalist’s obsession uncovers more to the story, Jesse Ball spins a wildly inventive and emotionally powerful take of unjust conviction and lost love.
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A Cure for Suicide: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
From the author of Silence Once Begun, a beguiling new novel about a man starting over at the most basic level, and the strange woman who insinuates herself into his life and memory.
A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an examiner, the man, her claimant. The examiner is both doctor and guide, charged with teaching the claimant a series of simple functions: this is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. She makes notes in her journal about his progress: he is showing improvement yet his dreams are troubling. One day the examiner brings the claimant to a party, where he meets Hilda, a charismatic but volatile woman whose surprising assertions throw everything the claimant has learned into question. What is this village? Why is he here? And who is Hilda? A fascinating novel of love, illness, despair, and betrayal,A Cure for Suicide is the most captivating novel yet from one of our most audacious and original young writers.
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A Cure for Suicide: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Jesse Ball
***LONG-LISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD***
A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an "examiner," charged with teaching the man a series of simple functions—this is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. Still, the man is haunted by strange dreams, and when he meets a charismatic, volatile young woman named Hilda at a party, it throws everything he has learned into question. What is this village? And why is he here?
A fascinating novel of love, illness, despair, and betrayal, A Cure for Suicide is the most captivating novel yet from one of our most audacious and original young writers.
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How to Set a Fire and Why: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
A teenage girl. A shattering loss. An obsession with a secret arson club. This is the story of a girl who has nothing and will burn anything.
Lucia’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s living in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt. And now she’s been kicked out of school—again. Making her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocketful of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and the striking intelligence that she tries to hide, Lucia spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother and following the only rule that makes any sense to her: Don’t do things you aren’t proud of. But when she discovers that her new school has a secret Arson Club, she’s willing to do anything to be a part of it, and her life is suddenly lit up. As Lucia’s fascination with the Arson Club grows, her story becomes one of misguided friendship and, ultimately, destruction.
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How to Set a Fire and Why: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Jesse Ball
“Ball has created a voice that echoes the beloved narrators of J. D. Salinger and John Green. . . . With her tragic past, brilliant mind and subversive potential, Lucia could be thought of as a young Lisbeth Salander, or a high-IQ, antiheroic Katniss Everdeen, but with a better sense of humor.” —Newsday
Lucia Stanton’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s recently been kicked out of school—again. Living with her aunt in a garage-turned-bedroom, and armed with only a book, a Zippo lighter, and a pocketful of stolen licorice, she spends her days riding the bus to visit her mom and following the only rule that makes any sense: Don’t do things you aren’t proud of.
When Lucia discovers that her school has a secret Arson Club, her life is suddenly lit up; she’ll do anything to join. Edgy, raw, and hilarious, How to Set a Fire and Why is a thrilling story about growing up the hard way.
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The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008
by Jesse Ball
From the author of A Cure for Suicide and Census comes a philosophical recasting of myth and legend, folklore and popular culture: a fabulist’s compendium of poetry and prose.
Jesse Ball—long-listed for the National Book Award, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and named one of Granta’s best young American novelists—is one of the most interesting, lyrical, fanciful, and “disturbingly original” (Chicago Tribune) writers working today. And The Village on Horseback is one of his most dazzling and varied works. These experimental pieces—including the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize–winning novella “The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr”—ask the reader not to imagine the world for what it is, but for what it could be: a blank tableau on which a spirited imagination can conjure tales out of, seemingly, nothing.
The Village on Horseback is an unmissable treat, a book of voyages to be taken on journeys far and wide.
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The Repeat Room: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy's broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.
Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball's absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
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$27.00
The Repeat Room: A Novel
by Jesse Ball
Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy's broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.
Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball's absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
Copies
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$16.95
Autoportrait
by Jesse Ball, Edouard Levé, Edouard Lev, Aedouard Levae
In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Édouard Levé hides nothing from his readers, setting out his entire life, more or less at random, in a string of declarative sentences.
Autoportrait is a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond "sincerity," Levé works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Levé's prose seems at first to be an autobiography without sentiment, as though written by a machine—until, through the accumulation of detail, and the author's dry, quizzical tone, we find ourselves disarmed, enthralled, and enraptured by nothing less than the perfect fiction... made entirely of facts. Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award in 2013.
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Autoportrait
by Jesse Ball, Edouard Levé, Edouard Lev, Aedouard Levae
"Adolescent, je croyais que La Vie mode d'emploi m'aiderait à vivre, et Suicide mode d'emploi à mourir. J'ai passé trois ans et trois mois à l'étranger. Un de mes amis jouit dans la trahison. J'oublie ce qui me déplaît. J'ai peut-être parlé sans le savoir avec quelqu'un qui a tué quelqu'un. Je vais regarder dans les impasses. Ce qu'il y a au bout de la vie ne me fait pas peur. Je n'écoute pas vraiment ce qu'on me dit. J'ai parlé à Salvado Dalí à l'âge de deux ans. Décrire précisément ma vie me prendrait plus de temps que la vivre. La date de naissance qu'indique ma carte d'identité est fausse. Je ne sais pas sur qui j'ai de l'influence. Je parle à mes objets lorsqu'ils sont tristes. Je ne sais pas pourquoi j'écris. Je suis calme dans les retrouvailles. Je n'ai rien contre le réveillon. Quinze ans est le milieu de ma vie, quelle que soit la date de ma mort. Je crois qu'il y a une vie après la vie, mais pas une mort après la mort. Je ne demande pas si on m'aime. Je ne pourrai dire qu'une fois sans mentir "je meurs". Le plus beau jour de ma vie est peut-être passé."
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Autoportrait
by Jesse Ball, Edouard Levé, Edouard Lev, Aedouard Levae
Nominated for the Chicago Review of Books Award
A work of unflinching honesty, Autoportrait is a hypnotic memoir of reflection, loss, and everyday joy from one of America's best contemporary novelists
Jesse Ball has produced fourteen acclaimed works of deeply empathetic absurdism in poetry and fiction. Now, he offers readers his first memoir, one that showcases his “humane curiosity” (James Wood) and invites the reader into a raw and personal account of love, grief, and memory. Inspired by the memoir Édouard Levé put to paper shortly before his death, Autoportrait is an extraordinarily frank and intimate work from one of America's most brilliant authors.
The subtle power of Ball's voice conjures the richness of everyday life. On each page, half-remembered moments are woven together with the joys and triumphs—and the mistakes and humiliations, too—that somehow tell us who we are, why we are here. Held at the same height as tragic accounts of illness or death are moments of startling beauty, banality, or humor: "I wake in the morning, I sit, I walk long distances. If there is somewhere to swim, I may swim. If I have a bicycle, I will ride it, especially to meet someone. There is no more preparing for me to do, other than preparing for death, and I do that by laughing. Not laughing at death, of course. Laughing at myself."
An extraordinary memoir that reminds us what is possible and builds to the kind of power one might feel reading Anne Carson's Glass Essay, or Joe Brainard's I Remember. Autoportrait will leave you feeling utterly invigorated, inspired, and a little afraid.
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The Deaths of Henry King
In The Deaths of Henry King, the hapless Henry King, as advertised, dies. Not just once or even twice, but seven dozen times, each death making way for a new demise, moving from the comic to the grim to the absurd to the transcendent and back again. With text by Jesse Ball and Brian Evenson complimented by Lilli Carré’s macabre, gravestone-rubbing-style art, Henry King’s ends are brought to a vividly absurd life.
Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Windeye and the novel Immobility (both finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award). His novel Last Days won the ALA’s RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Providence, RI, where he teaches in Brown University’s literary arts department.
Jesse Ball is the author of five novels, including the forthcoming A Cure for Suicide (Pantheon, 2015), Silence Once Begun, and several others. He has received numerous awards, including a 2014 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2008 The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize. He gives classes on lucid dreaming and lying in the SAIC’s MFA Writing program.
Lilli Carré is an artist living in Chicago. She has created several books of comics, including Heads or Tails (Fantagraphics), and her first children’s book, Tippy and the Night Parade (Toon Books). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Best American Comics.
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Sleep, Death's Brother
by Jesse Ball
Sleep, Death's Brother is an instruction manual on dreaming for children or incarcerated persons, teaching such individuals to lucid dream and thus use their dreams to somewhat escape their situations. While it is often the case that dream life is passively experienced, acclaimed novelist Jesse Ball (born 1978) reminds us that dreaming life is also a place where a sense of agency can grow. Even in the midst of physical or emotional environments that do not support such development in waking life, dreams are a place where one can take control. Ball calls for bravery in the exploration of this practice, and provides the dreamer with useful habits and techniques. Full of affirmation and wisdom, Sleep, Death's Brother is a guidebook "for all oneironauts young and old."
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Notes on My Dunce Cap
by Jesse Ball
A text for those curious about education as a context for creativity and collaboration, and for teachers who want to reconsider hierarchy in their classrooms, Jesse Ball's Notes on My Dunce Cap includes advisory material regarding the creation of syllabi and the manner in which groups may evaluate the work of an individual without harm. Ball is renowned for the unique courses he teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago, which are compiled in this volume along with extended notes on pedagogy. His meditations consider pedagogy in terms that are at once usefully broad and insightfully profound: "When it is possible for any of us to simply go and sit somewhere in the grass, and when it is such a delightful thing to do, to go and sit in the grass, whether by oneself or with others, then it is important to remember that anytime we think about teaching, or indeed, about any other activity--that we do it instead of sitting somewhere in the grass. We are passing up on the joy of solitude, and all its virtues and pleasures. Therefore, it is crucial that what happens when we teach be of the same value as time spent alone. And that is true both for ourselves and for those we teach."
Jesse Ball (born 1978) is the author of five novels, including The Curfew, Silence Once Begun and A Cure for Suicide, which was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award, as well as several collections of poetry, including March Book. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The New Republic, The Paris Review, Oberon, Circumference and Guernica Magazine.
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