JUMP THE DEVIL

Richard Rathwell • Literary Fiction / Experimental Fiction / Cross-Cultural Fiction

Book Description

Five lives. Five continents. One invisible web. In JUMP THE DEVIL, Richard Rathwell performs a literary high-wire act — interweaving five seemingly unrelated storylines into a single, shimmering global narrative. A man in a crawlspace. A woman with her cart. A doctor in an African village serving patients who may not exist. A girl celebrating New Year's. An Egyptian revolutionary staring at a computer screen. Through subtle clues and accumulating resonance, Rathwell challenges readers to decipher the connections that bind these disparate lives across oceans and cultures.

Rathwell's prose has been described as \"a fistful of sentences written with the subtlety of a geisha and the terse certainty of stainless steel\" (author John Olson), and reviewers have compared his style to \"the exquisite simplicity of Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn or Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.\" Drawing on decades of experience in international development and teaching English across Africa, Rathwell brings an insider's eye to the developing world — a perspective that refuses both sentimentality and cynicism.

JUMP THE DEVIL is fiction for a globalized age: a novel about interconnectedness, the stories we tell to make sense of disparate lives, and the audacious proposition that no one — no matter how distant — is truly alone.

Pull Quotes

\"A fistful of sentences written with the subtlety of a geisha and the terse certainty of stainless steel.\"

John Olson, author

Author Bio

RICHARD RATHWELL is a Canadian author and international development professional whose fiction is deeply informed by decades of work and travel across the developing world. He has taught English in multiple African countries and brings a rare cross-cultural fluency to his literary practice. His work with 8th House Publishing includes JUMP THE DEVIL and DON'T EXPECT THE SUN TO SHINE (with Harold Rhenisch).

Book Details

Also by This Author

DON'T EXPECT THE SUN TO SHINE (co-authored with Harold Rhenisch, published by 8th House)

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