The Encyclopedia of Lies

In these sixteen stories, Christopher Gudgeon, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Song of Kosovo, takes a heartbreaking and hilarious look into the lives, loves, sexual obsessions and delusions that inform a grand cast of off-kilter characters. Here is a gay couple who persevere with their marriage plans as the world, literally, crumbles around them, a woman who discovers the mysterious collection of letters that reveals a terrifying truth about her deceased fiancée, a dutiful son, locked in an life-or-death marathon race with his famous father, and a baby who becomes infested with fruit flies, sending his adoptive parents into a spiral of recrimination and self-doubt. At once bitterly funny, provocative and poignant, this remarkable collection builds on Gudgeon''s growing literary reputation, offering up the work of a great storyteller at his very best. "Gudgeon is . . . a major new talent in Canadian literature." (The Quill and Quire on Greetings from the Vodka Sea) "a remarkable first novel." (The Victoria Times-Colonist on Song of Kosovo)