Publisher Description
As a writer lies dying, he has one last story to tell: a tale of faith and devotion, a meditation on what lies beyond this life, and a prayer of gratitude that may lead to rebirth.
"Language is a map leading to a place not on the map," announces a young writer lying in a hospital bed at the beginning of The Presence of Absence. As he contemplates his impending physical disappearance and the impact on his beloved wife, he realizes, "Life doesn't start when you're born . . . it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to another person."
Infused with poetic clarity and graced with humor, Simon Van Booy's innovative novella asks us to find beauty—even gratitude—in the cycle of birth and death. Stripped of artifice, The Presence of Absence is a meditation between the writer and the reader, an imaginative work that challenges the deceit of written words and explores our strongest emotions.
Simon Van Booy is not only a master storyteller but a writer whose fiction is rich with philosophical insights into things both mapped and undiscovered. The Presence of Absence parts the darkness to reveal what has been just out of sight all along.
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About Simon Van Booy
Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky for two years, he lived in Paris and Athens before earning an MFA in 2002. He is the editor of multiple philosophy books and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Post, the Daily Telegraph, and the Guardian, as well as on NPR. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Long Island University. He is also involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities program for young adults living in underserved communities. He won the H.R. Hays Poetry Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, was a finalist for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and his work has been translated into thirteen languages.
About Philip Battley
Philip Battley is an actor and voice-over artist. His work in narration includes Flowers on the Grass by Monica Dickens, The Affair of the Porcelain Dog by Jess Faraday, and The Whole World by Emily Winslow, among others. Born and raised in London, he works in both his home city and in Los Angeles.