James Terry reads from The Return
Author James Terry reads from his short novel The Return, published by The Shortish Project.
In James Terry's novella THE RETURN, Bernard Aoust is a film professor at Berkeley, nearing retirement, who finds himself increasingly at odds with modern life. A Frenchman by birth, and an ideological child of May ‘68, Aoust is also obsessed with a long lost silent French film from 1923 and its obscure director, devoting his academic life to the film and banking on a new monograph to salvage his flagging career. After a series of unusual occurrences, the lost film plunges Aoust into an existential crisis.
"A riveting story about vision, obsession, and transgression... The prose is as unquittable as Aoust’s chain smoking. This novel deserves to be read in conversation with the canon." - Phong Nguyen, author of Bronze Drum and The Adventures of Joe Harper
"Grimly satirical and movie-mad, The Return mourns what we’ve lost in the pursuit of having everything everywhere all at once." - Ann Lewinson, author of Still Life with Meredith
"A powerful metaphor for the personal and collective memory of an entire generation, the one that believed it could change the world in May '68, while at the same time challenging us with a radically contemporary question: can new technologies kill the mystery, the freedom to forget, that shapes our individual and collective consciousness? And, above all, is this really what we want?” - Javier Moreno, author of Null Island
James Terry is the author of a short story collection, Kingdom of the Sun (University of New Mexico Press, 2016), and two novels, The Solitary Woman of Shakespeare (Sandstone, 2016), which was shortlisted for the 2017 HWA Debut Crown Award, and Heir Apparent (Skyhorse, 2019). His short stories have been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart and O.Henry prizes.
The Return is available now from local booksellers, Amazon, Bookshop.org and Outpost19.
The Shortish Project is an evolving database of new and classic short novels from publishers big and small. Find the latest. Discover hidden gems. Search by author, book title or ISBN here.
Or lean in and do a random scroll through the full Shortish database (600 titles or so)!
