The Book of Losman - K.E. Semmel
Product Details:
Paperback : 206 Pages
ISBN : 9781951631376
Cover design: Gwen Grafft
About the Book:
Meet Daniel Losman—an American in Copenhagen, translating books and living a solitary existence. His longtime girlfriend has left him, and the only highlights in his life are encounters with an offbeat artist he thinks he’s in love with and weekends with his three-year-old son, whom he worries has inherited his Tourette syndrome.
When Losman learns of a new drug designed to locate the root of his Tourette through childhood memories, he’s lured by promises of a cure and visits the mysterious lab that developed the drug. Initially, what he discovers buried deep within his brain rejuvenates him. But the more Losman takes the drug, the more he needs it. Losman steals some of the pills and locks himself away in his apartment, only to quickly find himself trapped inside his own mind. There’s a way out of his head, but it will come at a price…
With intelligence and humor reminiscent of Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, The Book of Losman explores the depths one man will go to make himself whole.
About the Author:
K.E. Semmel is a writer and translator. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ontario Review, Lithub, The Writer’s Chronicle, the Southern Review, Washington Post, and elsewhere. His translations include novels by, among others, Naja Marie Aidt, Karin Fossum, Simon Fruelund, and Jussi Adler Olsen. He is a former Literary Translation Fellow from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Scottsville, NY with his wife and son. Find him online at kesemmel.com.
“Semmel’s The Book of Losman asks important questions about memory, identity, and the things we choose from our personal histories to both passively and actively build our fractured selves. It is also riotously funny. Losman is the new literary everyman I didn’t know I needed.”
“A lonely American translator in Copenhagen, his persistent struggles with Tourette Syndrome, the artist neighbor he has a crush on, and the young son he is devoted to. This is The Book of Losman: imaginative, riveting, moving, occasionally absurd, and always thought-provoking. This slim novel asks how far we’ll go to cure what ails us, and explores how badly we want the past to solve the present. Semmel is an elegant writer, and this is an assured, remarkable debut.”
“Start to finish, K.E. Semmel’s debut novel is a true joy. Daniel P. Losman—a man full of fear, anxiety, happiness, and confusion—is a remarkable creation. His existential crisis, so masterfully depicted, made me want to both laugh and cry. Although I could hardly wait to learn what happens next, a fresh image or turn of phrase caught my eye on every page. The Book of Losman is a novel to linger over, to savor, to read aloud, to reread.”
“The death of an elderly neighbor kicks off this wild literary ride, in which Semmel deftly relates the story of Losman, a translator with Tourette who struggles to get to the source of his tics. Readers will be drawn right into Losman’s risky endeavor, which also involves a scientist from a mysterious lab who offers him a seemingly promising solution. The life of a literary translator has never looked so daring!”