True Fiction

Sohrab Homi Fraciss innovative new collection tells a spectrum of stories under a paradoxical new umbrella category: True Fiction. Monotony is banished from this book. At a Florida coffee shop, an immigrants voice opens up even as a hipster musicians shuts down. An underpaid bank teller in the age of ATMs is fired and goes postal. In the title story, on whose premise the book pivots away from realism, a professor recalls his favorite communication everand its utterly silent. A loving husband and father finds himself inexplicably transformed into a woman. In another world, the protagonist simultaneously faces his end and a new beginning. A budding female messiah confronts a non-gendered godhead. And a bastard prince of ancient Turkey (whose legendary Persian name lives on in the authors) invades Persia to seek his father. Yet we can see ourselves in them all. Even as the resident magician in Five Points Coffee & Spice regales his fellow customers, Fraciss literary dexterity takes us on a darkly beguiling magic-carpet ride. Sohrab Homi Fraciss new collection, True Fiction, is a tour de force. Showcasing his great gifts as a stylist and his deliciously unfettered imagination, the collection ranges across genres, transgresses expectation, creates with beauty, grace, humor, and insight a compassionate portrait of our essential humanness in these eight eclectic stories that surprise and delight. Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah (American Book Award) and Kind of Kin "Fracis is the keen voice of the outsider looking in, telling stories that we all need to hear." E.C. Osondu, author of Alien Stories (BOA Short Fiction Prize) and Voice of America (Caine Prize for African Writing)