DAVID KUHNLEIN

// die closer to me

David Kuhnlein's debut novella-in-stories Die Closer to Me follows Jo as she cares for her mother on planet Süskind — Earth's failed disability experiment. Along the way we meet a suicidal construction worker, a waitress who secretly eats her tip money, a jaded poet, a militant monk named Bhikkhu Brendan Fraser, and a small blue hypnotist named Bath.

// Available June 26th 2023 // 172pp

Reading Die Closer to Me feels like it’s story time on the Assisted Living planet they reserve for people who can’t afford a fresh lobotomy, and the only books left in your language they’ve got on file after the fires are Samuel Delany and Unica Zürn. An endlessly twisted, linguistically wicked experience, distastefully primed to shank the Depends off Costco sci-fi. Suck it up, Pops—Kuhnlein slays. – BLAKE BUTLER

Kuhnlein probes the spiritual depths of future decay, where bodily mysteries are revealed in corruption. A shuttling narrative interweaves bruised characters, rife with celestial grit, placed within the rot of a bankrupt system. Die Closer to Me speculates on condemned destiny, where damaged anatomies dream of a phantom satellite. Writing that pulses with brooding prevision. – REBECCA GRANSDEN

Hard sci-fi returns to form, The Cube Root of Uncertainty modded by Miguel de Unamuno and Leonid Andreyev, the family nest born out the wrong end, a unit that ate its bodycam live from hell on primetime bacchanal. – SEAN KILPATRICK

Divided into 13 sections and densely written, David Kuhnlein’s Die Closer to Me mesmerizes us with his intergalactic erudition and medical religion of life beyond space and beyond clinical advancements and experiments. His intelligent worlds are morphically entrancing, lavishly and unrestrainedly depicted, and medically intricate. It’s a super-exciting, unforgettable book. The kind that you return for immediate delirium and savor. – VI KHI NAO

Handling warning!! No one can imitate him. Readers are only corroded by David Kuhnlein’s silent insanity. – KENJI SIRATORI