Revolution rocks and rolls. An ex-TV star seizes power and tries to turn daily life into an endless film. Temporary People is a political fable of the first order. Set on the island of Bamerita, a country whose “history is like the rim of a wheel made to turn round and round, our political cycles nothing if not redundant,” Gillis's third novel, following Walter Falls and The Weight of Nothing, Temporary People explores the human condition in all its most vulnerable exposures. A brilliant send up of modern life turned inside out by the inescapable powers of history and fate, filled with pathos and humor, Gillis deftly explores the complexities of survival and choice in a world perpetually on the verge of going mad. Sharp and satirical, a breathtakingly paced romp, the end will leave you drop-jawed and wanting more. Temporary People is a book for the ages, and once again Gillis delivers.
“As thoroughly dark and thoroughly humane as Vonnegut's apocalyptic novels like Cat's Cradle and Galapagos, Temporary People is a suspenseful tale about history, hope, oppression, and modes of resistance. Gillis's world is richly imagined, his voice is clear, and his plot is intricate, as is his moral. In fact, this novel seems much more interested in probing and dramatizing the deep philosophical paradoxes of revolutionary thought than in providing any pat answer. Here's a fable for our time, and for just about any other time you can imagine.”
— Chris Bachelder, author of Bear v. Shark and U.S.!
"Steven Gillis writes as if his life depended on it. His imagination creates a complete world: Dickens without the furniture. This great bustling book seems to embody all he knows and can intuit of the world. As common as the morning paper, as rare as piano music, Gillis’s talent is transcendent."
— Ben Cheever, author of The Good Nanny
“Balancing world-building, a thriller-worthy plot, and high-end political dialogue, Temporary People is the kind of book that forces the reader to fight between turning the pages faster to find out what happens and slowing down to consider its arguments and to savor its sentences.”
—and all the other yards riding the daffodil bubble,
Sawtoothed with their borders perked in margarine
whites and yellows
Tossing on perfect peace pipe necks,
And that cross,
Their gorges stuffed in the color of blood orange
cupcake.
I look at how they pucker into the fit of thimble
foils, Chinese handcuffs,
My solitary and nostril comfort.
Mine more unbloom.
The rain is the same. It’s the same light—
Maybe the bulbs mark something so sad I should be
afraid to dig them up.
So they remain purse-lipped, like green beans,
The same color, the same snap when you break
them off.
BLACK LAWRENCE POET
JAMES REIDEL READS A POEM
Press play on the player below to hear Mr. Reidel read his poetry selection "April Is." Order James Reidel's volume of poetry, My Window Seat for Arlena Twigg, here.
JAMES REIDEL has published poems in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, The New Criterion, Ploughshares, and other journals since the mid-1980s. He is the author of Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees, published in 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press. His translation of two of Thomas Bernhard's poetry cycles, In Hora Mortis and Under the Iron of the Moon, was published as a single volume by Princeton University Press.
ABAYOMI ANIMASHAUN has won the 2008 Hudson Prize for a collection of unpublished stories or poems. Animashaun, a Nigerian émigré whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as 5 A.M., Drunken Boat, African American Review, and Southern Indiana Review, won the prize for his poetry manuscript, The Giving of Pears. His previous honors include a grant from the International Center for Writing and Translation and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize.
