The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs by Leslie Kirk Campbell

In these brilliant, thematically linked stories, men and women from the Midwest to the West Coast, from Germany to Japan—engineers, opera singers, waitresses, teenagers, and monks—reckon with their body’s relationship to grief, illness, violation, technology, and genocide. They escape their fate in unusual ways—by befriending the squatting heroin addict next door, using a child’s flute as a gun in the dark, or ordering a new pair of legs, all in a variety of rich settings.

The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs is about the ways our bodies are marked by memory, often literally (burns, bruises, tracks, tattoos), and the risky decisions we make when pushed to the extreme. There’s a little O’Connor, a dash of DeLillo, and a cup of Alice Munro mixed together with a great deal of compassion. Leslie Campbell’s fiction debut is a must-read and sure winner.

★ “History and memory crosscut through The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs in a gorgeous weave. These are marvelous, stirring stories, sometimes sexy, sometimes harrowing, somehow both timeless and timely. Campbell writes with great depth, patience, wisdom, and beauty.” ―Anthony Doerr, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for All the Light We Cannot See

★ “[An] engaging debut…marked by surprising encounters and poignant reflections.” ―Publishers Weekly

★ “Leslie Kirk Campbell’s stories feature protagonists whose wisdom and wit and tenderness and patience and openness to existence cannot save them from trauma or anxiety or longing or the manic duplicities of love. These stories are masterful on the impossibility of negotiating implacably contradicting desires, and on the indivisibility of the personal and the political. The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs is a superbly accomplished and assured debut.” ―Jim Shepard, author of The World to Come and Phase Six

★ “Leslie Kirk Campbell’s stories immerse you into a complete and layered world where her characters are suspended between self-destruction and rebirth. Hypnotic, strange, and lovely.” ―Michelle Wildgen, author of Bread and Butter and You’re Not You

Publisher: ‎ Sarabande Books (February 1, 2022)
Language: ‎ English
Paperback: ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 1946448885
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1946448880
Item Weight: ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions: ‎ 5 x 0.75 x 8 inches