One of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2017: A perfect mix of entertaining and edgy, Fugue States is a thought-provoking exploration of the first-generation Canadian experience from one of the more irreverent, inventive and daring minds writing fiction today Fugue States begins as Ash Dhar, a thirty-something writer, opens his mouth to deliver a eulogy at a funeral—the funeral for his own father, a Kashmir-born doctor. But in that moment between thought and speech, something mysterious occurs: a terrible wordless gap into which Ash falls helplessly, recovering only as the concerned faces of friends and family shock him into focus. Later, still unsettled as he sorts through his father’s belongings, Ash discovers a partially completed and baffling work of fiction set in what seems to be Kashmir. Reading his father’s words, Ash feels compelled to know more about this ancestral land—and yet he resists the impulse to visit, loathe to be a cliché, chasing self-discovery in a war-torn homeland. But Ash’s childhood friend Matt—pothead, massage therapy student and self-described “maker of memories”—has no such hesitations and goes in Ash’s place . . . with unexpected and excruciating results. Soon, Ash is forced to rescue Matt by following him to India—where he experiences a second alarming gap, one that echoes and amplifies the mysterious “fugue state” with which the novel began. Fugue States is at once a parody of clueless tourism; a knowing, uneasy look at contemporary masculinity; and a surprisingly poignant tale about the deep inchoate melancholy that abides in people who, like Ash and his father, and even Matt-the-fool, have never felt completely at home in the world.

Fugue States

Literature & Fiction

Malla, Pasha

Genre Fiction

Knopf Canada

Vintage Canada

The Withdrawal Methods: Stories

House of Anansi Press

Shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book
 It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven's illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.
 People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O'Connor were resting on his shoulders. You've never read anything quite like People Park.

People Park

Imagine a world just like our own: the celebrities march their sequined parade on TV, the Dairy Queens dollop out fat splooges of frozen yogurt, folks hump one another like they always have, and sometimes there's shoplifting, and sometimes there's love. Except there's no morality, none at all, which skews things some. Murder happens off-handedly, as a joke, the librarians are all on acid, at parties people chug goblets of their own pee, and Fred Savage has been crowned king of Romania. This is the world of All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts, a book of poems about the search for order amid total, hilarious moral collapse.

All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Snare Books

In our Autumn 2009 anthology, Colson Whitehead charts the rise to fame of a truth-telling comedian. Stephen O'Connor transports us to a cabin in the woods, where a young woman attempting to finish her dissertation in solitude becomes increasingly convinced she's not alone. Pasha Malla follows a young writer as he explores how tragedy influences art-and how life falls short of it. Marisa Silver tells the tale of three sisters who perceive the truth about their parents through the eyes of some unexpected visitors, and Lydia Davis' solitary narrator acutely details the behavior of three cows who live in a pasture just across the road.

Electric Literature No.2

Silver, Marisa

Davis, Lydia

O'Connor, Stephen

WHITEHEAD,COLSON

United States

Electric Literature

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion is a collection of found poems composed of the words of professional athletes. The content of post-game interviews and sports chatter is so often meaningless, if not insufferable, and yet there are athletes like Metta World Peace who transcend lame clichés and rote patter, who use language in surprising ways, who can be funny and shocking and insightful and alarmingly sincere pure poetry. Muhammad Ali offered dazzling displays of lexical wizardry, and Allen Iverson’s infamous practice” rant shifted the post-game press conference from the banal to the absurd. This book is a celebration of these rare and exceptional moments. Various poetic forms and line-breaks highlight or, in the words of Deion Sanders, deem to set a candor on” the sophisticated, sublime, and surprising performances of language made by professional athletes.

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion

Parker, Jeff

Poetry

Featherproof Books

Ten years ago one might not have imagined the largest national gay rights lobbying group (Human Rights Campaign) endorsing a right - wing Republican Senatorial candidate (Al D'Amato in New York)' or the San Francisco Pride parade adopting the Budweiser advertising slogan as its offcial theme (2002). As an assimilationist gay mainstream wields increasing power' the focus of gay struggle has become limited to marriage' military service' and adoption. The gay mainstream presents a sanitized' straight - friendly version of gay identity which makes it safe for Richard Chamberlain or Rosie O'Donnell to come out' and still rake in the bucks. By the twisted priorities of this gay mainstream' it's okay to oppose a queer youth shelter becuase it might interfere with property values' or to fight against the inclusion of transgendered people under hate crimes legislation because this might not appeal to straight voters. As the gay mainstream ironically prioritizes the attainment of straight privilege over all else' it drains queer identity of any meaning' relevance' or cultural value - and calls this progress. That's Revolting shows us what the new queer resistance looks like. The collection is a fistful of rocks to throw at the glass house of Gaylandia. That's Revolting uses queer identity and struggle as a starting point from which to reframe' reclaim' and re - shape the world.

That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Large Print 16pt)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

ReadHowYouWant

Pasha Malla knows joy in all of its weird, unsettling, and wondrous forms. In their humor, warmth, and rigorous honesty, his stories clearly capture something odd and beautiful: the unmistakable feeling of empathy. From young couples fighting through the emotional trauma of the modern world to children navigating wayward, forbidden paths of a fantasized adulthood, Malla presents characters deeply entrenched in the familiar and hearts that slowly open to reveal the pain and unexpected love that life accumulates. The Withdrawal Method offers worlds where Niagara Falls has run dry, where people’s skin can be shed in a single piece, and where ancient frustrated chess masters invent machines that unexpectedly alter the course of history. Reminiscent of Lorrie Moore, Haruki Murakami, and George Saunders, these stories are haunting, captivating, and constructed with a poise and precision that reach beyond technical skill. Malla’s is an assured new voice; his smooth, mature style is punctuated by bursts of wild humor and enlivened by endlessly inventive storytelling. As individual narratives, these stories speak to each side of the protean human psyche, but when taken together they address with full understanding the fragility of our lives.

The Withdrawal Method

Dramas & Plays

Catapult

It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrator Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven's illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of. People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O'Connor were resting on his shoulders. You've never read anything quite like People Park.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Malla, Pasha. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Malla, Pasha