Stories, Like Illnesses

Elkins "offers a profusion of visual and philosophical imagination... A deeply unconventional debut, it's an invitation into a teeming imagination."
—John Williams, Washington Post 

“The language, the pacing, the shifting moods, the academic stuff– all are in the right proportions. This is a MAJOR novel.” —Steven Moore, author of The Novel, An Alternative History

Mushrooms and comets, amoebas and crystals, an idyllic but uncanny day in the country: Samuel Emmer is losing grasp of his memories, and relying on a microscope to search for his future. 

Biologist Samuel Emmer’s imagination is spinning out of control. As he confronts an increasingly mystifying and unreliable past, he is also losing sight of his future. Brilliant but lost, Emmer desperately tries to engage with those he cares about: the memory of his grief-stricken mother, obsessed with mycology and cosmology; a potential romance with co-worker Rosie, dependent on healing crystals to feel safe; and the fraying relationship with his older brother, disappearing into the ether of his own success. Strange imagery (mushrooms, crystals, microscopes, technical diagrams, comets, amoebas and idyllic skies) disrupts and diverts the text as the narrative itself fractures into competing voices. In the midst of it all is Samuel Emmer, at risk of vanishing himself. 

The third volume in James Elkins’ landmark multi-volume novel Five Strange Languages, Stories, Like Illnesses is set in time both before and after the events of previously published volumes  (Weak in Comparison to Dreams and A Short Introduction to Anneliese), the ideal entry point to Elkins’ sprawling modern day epic. 

Heartbreaking, hilarious and deeply resonant.

“I don’t where it came from, I don’t know how it happened, but I got it in Toronto... I think everyone should read that book. It’s unbelievable” —JACOB ELORDI, on Weak in Comparison to Dreams