About Thanks by Pablo Katchadjian
With a twisted sense of humor and a heavy dose of fantasy, Katchadjian takes those things that are so common as to be ordinary-bad bosses, crazy significant others, descent into drug use-and sets them in a realm that brings to mind Kafka or Kojève.
Our narrator presents us with a constantly moving array of bizarre, philosophically tinged excitement: a slave rebellion in a strange castle on an unnamed island, an attack of flying worms made of ash which either represents Adam's sin or the Oedipal complex, a feral young woman who lives off the grid on whatever she can scrounge, and a hallucinatory root that throws the narrator into a black void, which he comes to fear he may never escape.
About the Book
Thanks is a philosophical fiction novel that blends dark humor with surreal fantasy elements. Pablo Katchadjian crafts a narrative that transforms everyday struggles into extraordinary, thought-provoking scenarios. The novel features a narrator who guides readers through a series of interconnected bizarre events, each layered with philosophical meaning.
The story moves between multiple settings and situations: from a slave rebellion within a mysterious castle on an isolated island, to encounters with supernatural phenomena like ash-formed flying worms that symbolize deeper psychological concepts. A feral young woman surviving on the margins of society adds another dimension to the narrative, while the hallucinatory root sequence plunges the narrator into existential darkness.
Published by Dalkey Archive Press in October 2019, this paperback edition makes Katchadjian's distinctive voice accessible to English-speaking readers through translator Priscilla Posada's work.
