Audrey Szasz – “Zealous Immaculate” Book

NEW PAPERBACK EDITION, perfect bound, 214 pages.
LIFE DURING WARTIME
The second novel from a major new literary talent
“Basking like a reptile in your reflected glories. I just respond.
Sometimes I don’t even do that. I just do whatever I end up doing. No
thought. No plan. No real motive. No overarching theories or
philosophies. I can’t even stick to a routine. I lack discipline. Can
you give it to me? Can you tell me what to do? Can you force me to do
whatever is necessary to survive? From one day to the next, until the
very end? Will you give me the beating I deserve? ”
++++++++++++++++++++
“I wish the nurse would tie me up so tightly my blood circulation is
cut off and then smash a vase over my head and suffocate me with duct
tape and a pillow filled with Canadian goose feathers. I wish a mortar
shell would land on this building. I wish for air force drones to bomb
this town repeatedly for days on end until there is nothing left except a
vast lifeless wasteland. A cratered moonscape. I wish for walls of fire
to consume this yokel country. I wish a phalanx of marauding cyborgs
would stroll through the towns and villages executing any living
creature their sensors detect. I hate everyone but I hate myself most of
all. I vouch for no one.”
++++++++++++++++++++
“They told me that my name is Tamara. But maybe it’s not my real
name. I can’t remember anything anyway. I don’t even know where my
parents are. The Director told me that my parents are dead. She told me
that they were shot in the square. In the city. There was a big shooting
there. The people were all lined up in the square, and the soldiers who
were standing up on the balconies or lying on the roofs of the
buildings fired their guns. They shot everyone in the square. Nobody
could escape because the army put tanks at either end of the square so
nobody could run away. They all got shot. The Director says my parents
are dead but I don’t believe her. One day my parents will come and get
me. The Director tells me not to worry. She says I am safe now. She says
nobody will ever find me.”
Cover photograph and design: Karolina Urbaniak