Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey

PRAISE

“A beautiful, powerful book: mythic, vivid, heart-rending. Kesey reminds us anew of how much power there is in an open heart and the simple declarative sentence. He also reminds us that war is a viral madness, infecting everyone it touches.” —George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation

“Roy Kesey’s Nothing in the World is as horrific and convincing as a nightmare. At its best it resembles the fever visions of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God or Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. In telling the story of one young man caught up in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Kesey has written a story that pushes us beyond war and strife. Instead, we are taken on a morally shattering forced march to the limits of human endurance itself. It is beautiful, brave, and I will not soon forget it.” —Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things

“Nothing in the World is a mesmerizing tale of expulsion and return: this is as much a trance as a story. Here’s the Serbo-Croatian war as you’ve never seen it, its starkness and brutality balanced by the harrowing beauty of its landscapes. Roy Kesey is a fearless and very welcome new writer.”  —Anthony Doerr, author of Four Seasons in Rome

“In haunting, evocative prose, Roy Kesey captures the horrors of war, the insanity of genocide, as well as the fleeting joys of love. Nothing in the World is a memorable debut.”  —Laila Lalami, author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roy Kesey’s latest book is a short story collection called Any Deadly Thing, published by Dzanc Books in 2013. His other books include a novel called Pacazo (the January 2011 selection for the Rumpus Book Club, and winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award), a collection of short stories called All Over (a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, and one of The L Magazine’s Best Books of the Decade), a novella called Nothing in the World (winner of the Bullfight Media Little Book Award), and two historical guidebooks. His short stories, essays, translations, and poems have appeared in more than a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology, and New Sudden Fiction. He has won two Pushcart Prize special mentions, the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in fiction, and a 2010 prose fellowship from the NEA. He currently lives in Maryland with his wife and children.