Head of Zeus

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The Sea Beast takes a Lover

by Michael Andreasen

A lovesick kraken slowly drags the object of its desire - a ship of sailers - into the sea; a group of cantankerous saints materialize in a well-appointed parlour, and must unravel the mystery of how they got there; ageing fathers are sunk to the bottom of the ocean in pressure-sealed crates in a time-honoured ritual.

Michael Andreasen's stories romp through the lunatic and surreal with a tender generous ease; there is a joyous absurdity to each premise. Just because a sister is born without a head doesn't mean her brother won't love and protect her; just because an adulterous tryst ends in alien abduction doesn't mean the man doesn't miss his wife.

An extremely funny, very weird, brilliantly constructed set of stories, from an exciting young writer.

Head of Zeus, an Apollo book * Fiction

08 Mar 2018 * 240pp * £5.99 * 9781786696625

REVIEWS

'A treasury of fantastic tales - full of mermaids, prophetic dancing bears, exploding children, and distraught time travellers. It's also a collection of longing, of loss, of loving deeply, and of learning what it means to care for others. A brilliant book, daring and wonderful'

Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World

'Sits on a small shelf of books that I will read a dozen times over. It is full of explosions of magic'

Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

'Uncannily inventive yet unfailingly grounded in all-too-familiar struggles of the heart, these are stories that vary widely in subject matter but never in the confident distinctiveness of Michael Andreasen's voice. What a voice it is! What a vision! For what is more exciting to a reader than discovering a new way to see the world? This thrillingly original debut gives us just that in every story, on every page'

Josh Weil, author of The Age of Perpetual Light

'Andreasen has a big, roomy imagination, and a command of language to furnish the worlds he creates with both precision and grandeur. These stories are, by turns, timeless and urgent, dreamy and nightmarish, heartbroken and hopeful. A brilliant collection'

Charles Yu, author of Sorry Please Thank You and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Author

Michael Andreasen

Michael Andreasen is a recent graduate of University of California, where he received the McDonald Harris Prize for Fiction. His story, The King's Teacup at Rest, was published by the New Yorker. He's working on his first novel.

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