One of many to-be-desired releases in Les Figues’ TrenchArt: Parapet Series (among others such as I Go to Some Hollow by Amina Cain and God’s Livestock Policy by Stan Apps), this special compilation of nine well-crafted short stories by German author Axel Thormählen exceeds any careful reader’s expectations—they are gems to be marveled. Though these stories are similar in tone and in literary design, the subject matter in which they investigate, explode or agitate is such that any receptive soul must harbor the ability to linger appropriately with each one, and a safe haven is needed for the reader to engage in Thormählen’s highly subjective, poetic fiction. Thormählen does not avoid uncomfortable subjects, and because of this, his fiction is—at times—philosophically cumbersome. His stories do not shy away from our mutually shared experiences, and they display internal worlds of his characters with a selective eye—keen in observation, precise in both their secular and otherworldly guises. More »