First published 2011
This collection emerges from Gary Shteyngart's collaboration with artist Damien Hirst's October 2010 London gallery show. Shteyngart crafts prose pieces responding to Hirst's large oil paintings that pair skulls and crossbones with pharmaceutical pills. The stark visual contrast between death symbols and healing tablets becomes Shteyngart's literary playground. His characters navigate the thin boundaries between what kills and what cures, finding dark humor in medicine cabinets and mortality. The stories pulse with Shteyngart's signature blend of immigrant anxiety and American absurdity, where prescription bottles hold both salvation and destruction. Each piece mirrors Hirst's artistic duality, exploring how the same substances that promise relief can deliver ruin.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, medical, 21st-century, dark
Vibes: dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: dark-themes, moral-ambiguity
Period: 2010
88 pages · Paperback · Harry N. Abrams
Content warnings: death, medical-trauma