Xstabeth

by David Keenan

Overview

A transcendent love letter to literature and music, Xstabeth is an exciting new work from a writer who, book-by-book, is rewriting the rules of contemporary fiction.

Aneliya’s father dreams of becoming a great musician but his naivete and his unfashionable music suggest he will never be taken seriously. Her father’s best friend, on the other hand, has a penchant for vodka, strip clubs, and moral philosophy. Aneliya is torn between love of the former and passion for the latter.

When an angelic presence named Xstabeth enters their lives Aneliya and her father’s world is transformed.

A short, stylish novel with a big heart, humor, Xstabeth moves from Russia to Scotland, touching upon the pathos of Russian literature and the Russian soul, the power of art and music to shape reality, and the metaphysics of golf while telling a moving father-daughter story in highly-charged, torrential prose. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609457341
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Keenan’s This Is Memorial Device won the Collyer Bristow Award for Debut Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2017 Gordon Burn Prize. His second novel, For the Good Times won the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize. Edna O’Brien described reading his third novel, Xstabeth (Europa, 2022), as “feel[ing] like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music.” His fourth novel, Monument Maker, will also be published by Europa. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

Editorial Reviews

★ “A memorable read... Music and the sacred converge in unexpected ways. Keenan explores that dynamic through a story about a father, a daughter, and the music that haunts them.”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

★ “A philosophical, poetic novel... An open conversation about music and art that explores the meanings and interrelationship of synchronicity, significance, memories, mercy, and grace... The Russian soul and its attendant angst are well explored in this short novel.”—Library Journal (Starred Review)

★ “A daring experiment that questions what fiction can and should be.”—Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

“This book spoke, it said ‘read me’ from the very first sentence as if it were alive, it gave me visceral joy.”—Kim Gordon

“Reading Xstabeth feels like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music.”—Edna O’Brien, author of Girl

“Prepare for more of that inimitable Keenan narrative voodoo brilliance.”—Wendy Erskine, author of Sweet Home

“Absolutely unique.”—Booklist

“[Xstabeth] will shock and delight, confuse and inspire, all in a manner that truly elevates the form.”—Publishers Weekly

“A ghostly continent-striding coming-of-age story.”—The New Statesman

“A strange, ambitious book... Xstabeth is the story of a father and daughter, of memory, space, philosophizing, sex, golf, saints, fairies, more sex, Leonard Cohen, a secret band, life as performance, and, maybe most of all, music and musicality. Xstabeth is the ornate key to a lock you didn't know you were looking for (but now cannot imagine not finding).”—Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books (Portland, OR)

“You can lose yourself in the novel’s weird loops and whorls, searching for resolution while luxuriating in the lack of it... There’s something here of the 19th-century Russian novelists’ passion for authenticity, their fervid drama... The sense of a synchronous world being created even as you read, where past visions spark memories that echo the present, leaping across synaptic gaps with the grace of a bird in flight.”—The Guardian

“‘A genre of one.’ The same might be said of this gloriously sui generis novel.”—Financial Times

“It is one of the most interesting novels I've come across this year. Reading it, I felt the unmistakable pulse of something living, and it isn't done with me yet.”—Literary Review

“One of the most exciting new writers around.”—Daily Mail (UK)

From the Publisher