The Sentence by Matthew Baker
The Sentence is wholly unique: a graphic novel told in the form of a single 6732-word sentence, diagrammed in full.
Set in a parallel-universe United States in which the government has recently been overthrown by a military coup, the story is narrated by a lonely young grammar professor, Riley, who is suddenly branded a traitor by the new regime. Bewildered by the charges, and fearing a death sentence, Riley manages to flee to an anarchist commune in the wilderness. After a lifetime of feeling alienated, of desperately longing for friendship, Riley is astonished to be accepted and loved by the anarchists—to come to love the anarchists in return. But when the anarchists reveal a plot to assassinate the authoritarian dictator of the country, Riley is forced to choose whether to support the plot—to return to the capital and help the anarchists bomb the headquarters—or to lose their newfound family forever.
Format: Hardcover
Publication date: 4/2/24
ISBN: 978-1-950539-74-1
The Sentence is wholly unique: a graphic novel told in the form of a single 6732-word sentence, diagrammed in full.
Set in a parallel-universe United States in which the government has recently been overthrown by a military coup, the story is narrated by a lonely young grammar professor, Riley, who is suddenly branded a traitor by the new regime. Bewildered by the charges, and fearing a death sentence, Riley manages to flee to an anarchist commune in the wilderness. After a lifetime of feeling alienated, of desperately longing for friendship, Riley is astonished to be accepted and loved by the anarchists—to come to love the anarchists in return. But when the anarchists reveal a plot to assassinate the authoritarian dictator of the country, Riley is forced to choose whether to support the plot—to return to the capital and help the anarchists bomb the headquarters—or to lose their newfound family forever.
Format: Hardcover
Publication date: 4/2/24
ISBN: 978-1-950539-74-1
The Sentence is wholly unique: a graphic novel told in the form of a single 6732-word sentence, diagrammed in full.
Set in a parallel-universe United States in which the government has recently been overthrown by a military coup, the story is narrated by a lonely young grammar professor, Riley, who is suddenly branded a traitor by the new regime. Bewildered by the charges, and fearing a death sentence, Riley manages to flee to an anarchist commune in the wilderness. After a lifetime of feeling alienated, of desperately longing for friendship, Riley is astonished to be accepted and loved by the anarchists—to come to love the anarchists in return. But when the anarchists reveal a plot to assassinate the authoritarian dictator of the country, Riley is forced to choose whether to support the plot—to return to the capital and help the anarchists bomb the headquarters—or to lose their newfound family forever.
Format: Hardcover
Publication date: 4/2/24
ISBN: 978-1-950539-74-1
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE SENTENCE
“I was left in awe.”
— Tiana Clark, author of I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood
“This is a perfect book.”
— Lydia Conklin, author of Rainbow Rainbow
“There’s a moment in The Sentence—that I wouldn’t dare spoil—when the reader’s commitment to this literary challenge is rewarded with the sensation of floating away on a cloud. It is sublime.”
— Jac Schaeffer, writer and creator of WandaVision
“In The Sentence, Matthew Baker has once again rewired my brain… Baker’s work evokes the thrill of discovery in Choose Your Own Adventure books, immersive theater, and Calvino’s hidden architectures.”
— Simon Han, author of Nights When Nothing Happened
“Matthew Baker’s writing can only be described in the many yets it creates: humorous yet disturbing, gripping yet patient, timely yet timeless. In The Sentence, Baker offers a precise, visionary story of survival and community told in the form of a sentence diagram. On its surface a dystopian cautionary tale, this novella is a startling reflection on language, trust, and desperation in the face of fascism. This is Baker’s most exciting work yet.”
— Isle McElroy, author of The Atmospherians and People Collide
“The Sentence is a captivating magic trick… Lovers of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch will find themselves relieved to discover that rampant, expansive, and daring experimentalism is alive and well in the work of Matthew Baker.”
— Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot and Belly Up
“A beautiful tribute.”
— Gabriel Mascaro, writer and director of Divine Love
“A knife-edge thriller, a crystalline schematic, and a piercing character study... Prepare to be changed.”
— Sam Ross, author of Company
“A novel that is as inventive as it is incisive… This is a book that can be consumed one sitting, but that will stick with a reader long after its last clause.”
— Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria and The Last Catastrophe
“Matthew Baker’s The Sentence is a masterful and deviously elegant display of the choices that are made in constructing a work of art and how these choices reveal the construction of consciousness in systems that can both entrap and liberate us, linguistically, interpersonally, politically. This book is a pleasure and an accomplishment, one that I plan on marveling at and enjoying again and again.”
— Mary South, author of You Will Never Be Forgotten
“Never before have I felt so powerfully the drama of syntax. This book is a marvel… yet another thrilling innovation from the mad laboratory of Matthew Baker.”
— Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special
“The most ingenious piece of writing I’ve ever read.”
— Zoé Wittock, writer and director of Jumbo
"Baker's mind is thrilling... The Sentence is a book of astonishing invention."
— Claire Luchette, author of Agatha Of Little Neon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Named one of Variety’s “10 Storytellers To Watch,” Matthew Baker is the author of the story collections Why Visit America and Hybrid Creatures and the children’s novel Key Of X, originally published as If You Find This. Digital experiments include the temporal fiction “Ephemeral,” the interlinked novel Untold, the randomized novel Verses, and the intentionally posthumous Afterthought, along with the cyber zine Code Lit.
