Craft, Ananda Lima
Craft, Ananda Lima
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Craft
Stories I Wrote for the Devil

Author: Ananda Lima

Narrator: Taylor Harvey

Unabridged: 5 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/18/2024

Synopsis

At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life, and she writes him stories about beautiful and impossible things. Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and unsettling linked collection that lures listeners into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil, where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. With a singular voice in the narrative-bending tradition of Kafka, Cortázar, and Bulgakov, Lima speaks to Brazilian-American immigrant experiences—of ambition, fear, heartbreak, and home—with equal parts warmth and agitation. Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a powerful experience: once listened to, you’re as much a part of the stories as they’re a part of you. The collection includes “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”

About Ananda Lima

Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer born in Brasilia, Brazil, now living in Chicago, IL. She's the author of the poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The Common, Witness, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is her fiction debut.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rachel (TheShadesofOrange)

4.0 Stars This is such a unique short story collection. It's impressive to make a slice-of-life “deal with the devil” kinda story. It's such a strange juxtaposition but it completely works. I liked the subtle unsettling feeling of these stories. I tend to prefer these collections where all the stories......more

Goodreads review by Becky

Star review in the April 2024 issue of Library Journal This is a VERY COOL reading experience, one that stays with you and echoes, knocking around in your brain days after finishing it. I actually went back and re-read a bit because I wanted to, even though I was under deadline to finish other books.......more

Goodreads review by Lydia

Ananda Lima what a great group of short stories that kept my attention. Such great story telling. The story starts when the writer meets the Devil at a Halloween party. I will remember these stories for awhile. Highly recommend.......more

Goodreads review by Alex

This short story collection suffers from an imprecise synopsis and marketing. The summary states Craft as a “intoxicating and unsettling linked collection” with the genre of horror. This is most definitely a litfic collection with the underlying themes of immigration and government at the forefront.......more

Quotes

"These interconnected stories centered on the craft of writing are both intriguing and thought-provoking . . . Narrator Taylor Harvey’s placid voice helps listeners meditate on the story’s individual messages, portraying the devil as one who seems sad about humanity’s folly." –Library Journal

A terrific fiction debut... The stories, and the stories within those stories, connect to some of the cruelest portions of the human experience with uncommon warmth and wit.

"[Narrator] Taylor Harvey brings an unusual collection of short stories to life . . . The performance borders on the musical with Harvey matching the poetic cadence while ensuring that the unusual elements—tiny humans wrapped in plastic as snacks, a vending machine addiction, and a relationship with the devil—are clear and engaging." –AudioFile

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