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Counternarratives

by John Keene

History from unexpected angles

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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Praise from Publishers Weekly

    The book is described as “suspenseful, thought-provoking, mystical, and haunting.”

AlbakiReads Editorial

History from unexpected angles

Spanning the seventeenth century to the present and moving across continents, these stories revisit the past through forms that include memoir, newspaper account, detective story, and interrogation transcript. Their subjects range from an escaped enslaved man’s view of liberty and the American Revolution to a free Jim’s later meeting with Huckleberry Finn. Elsewhere, a figure from an Edgar Degas painting gets to speak for herself. Together, the pieces bring historical records, familiar literary material, and visual art into conversation, making perspective and the telling of history central concerns.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in historical short fiction across different periods and places.
  • Those drawn to stories that engage with American history, literature, and art.
  • Readers curious about fiction using documentary and investigative forms.

Themes

Historical memory and perspectiveLiberty and enslavementLiterary and artistic reinterpretationDocumentary forms

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, and crossing multiple continents, Counternarratives draws upon memoirs, newspaper accounts, detective stories, and interrogation transcripts to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present. "An Outtake" chronicles an escaped slave's take on liberty and the American Revolution; "The Strange History of Our Lady of the Sorrows" presents a bizarre series of events that unfold in Haiti and a nineteenth-century Kentucky convent; "The Aeronauts" soars between bustling Philadelphia, still-rustic Washington, and the theater of the U. S. Civil War; "Rivers" portrays a free Jim meeting up decades later with his former raftmate Huckleberry Finn; and in "Acrobatique," the subject of a famous Edgar Degas painting talks back.
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