Thursday Giveaway: Nothing in the World

My friend Roy Kesey is publishing his first book, a novella called Nothing in the World, which has been praised by George Saunders, Anthony Doerr, Tom Bissell, David Vann, and, uh, me. I loved it. Nothing in the World tells the story of Josko Banovic, a young, lonely Croatian man who soon finds himself dragged into a war he doesn’t quite comprehend, but in which he contributes his share of courage and cowardliness, occasional kindness and utmost cruelty. In a review for TEV, Ron Currie, Jr. writes:

Through Josko, Kesey illustrates the grotesque incongruities of war, how it produces impossible duality, souls in which seemingly contradictory elements can coexist. Josko, like the boy he is, yearns painfully for his sister in one scene; a few pages later, he shoots a man twice in the back and cuts the head off his corpse. He politely insists on paying for rolls from a bakery, then murders a man by slamming his face into the fan of a jeep engine. Like a heartbroken child he follows the voice of the girl he’s imagined is his love, then wanders into a cafe and, as a joke, puts on display the severed head of the man he killed earlier and orders a drink for it. Horrible acts, perpetrated with a coolness that borders on sociopathic, but Kesey merely reports them in his clear, subtly lyrical style, refusing to pass judgment of any kind.

You can find more coverage of Nothing in the World here. So here’s how it works: The first person to send me an email with the subject line “Kesey” gets the free copy. Please include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Matthew T. from Buxton, Maine.