The Sleep of Reason is in My Hands at Last!

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Look what came in the mail!  

The Sleep of Reason is my collaboration with Francisco de Goya, one original story by myself for each of the 80 etchings of his Los Caprichos. Here's the book's back copy, describing it:

At last, Goya’s immortal etchings get the fictive treatment they deserve! Grotesque, mordant, and darkly hilarious by turn, the satiric images of Los Caprichos are as relevant now as they were when they were first published in 1799. In an era of war and extreme cruelty very much like our own, they laid bare the folly and absurdity of the human condition. As do the stories Michael Swanwick has crafted to accompany them. It is a monstrous and possibly even blasphemous work of hubris for a contemporary writer to collaborate with an artist recognized as “the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns” two centuries after his death rendered him unable to give his consent to the project. But Swanwick is up to the task. Read this book and discover for yourself the satirical worlds of Goya and Swanwick.

 To this I must add that John D. Berry did a beautiful job designing the book. If you held it in your hand and opened it randomly, you'd want to own it, even before reading a single word. The reproduction of Goya's etchings is fine and lucid and the prose is laid out in an open and inviting manner that as good as begs you to sit down in an easy chair and start reading.

And what of the stories . . . ?

You may well ask. "Grotesque, mordant, and darkly hilarious by turn," describes these stories well. I wouldn't advise you to binge read them. But I am immodest enough to admit that I'm proud of the stories and the prose they're written in.

I honestly think you should buy a copy.

 The paperback edition, published at a perfectly reasonable £12.99 can be ordered directly from PS Publishing here. The hardcover edition, published at a scandalously affordable £25.00 in an edition of 100, predictably sold out before publication. 

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