The Marbled Swarm
“A mesmerizing, labyrinthine tour through an especially hellish father-son relationship.” (Vanity Fair)“Provocative...Cooper’s interest in the darkest corners of the human experience...has not dimmed with age. The novel’s contradictory narratives intentionally echo the secret passageways in which the narrator’s predatory activities take place, creating a baroque, voyeuristic effect. (New Yorker)“The Marbled Swarmis concerned as much with language as it is with relationships and power….His fantastical story of everyday cannibalism is told in such finely chiseled yet disorienting prose that you suspect you’re being led into a maze.” (OUTMagazine)“Cooper’s status as an underground renegade of experimental fiction doesn’t reduce his talent or the brilliance of his dark views. He is a passionately humane writer. We need his voice now more than ever.” (PasteMagazine)“… lies somewhere in betweenLolitaandDracula, mixing the gothic terror and disturbing subject of both, within a contemporary bi-sexual, skinny jeaned, iPhone-totting environment, and a much further push of the envelope. … a novel that must be read.” (The Coffin Factory)“InThe Marbled Swarm, Cooper has coupled a clever intellectual romp with stomach-turning brutality and quite a bit of humor.” (Washington Independent Book Review)“…deftly executed plot surgery…” (NylonMagazine)“The most personal, and honest [of Cooper’s] daring, perplexing books.” (BookForum)“Readers unfamiliar with transgressive fiction would do well to brace themselves for what will either be the shock of the unrelentingly different or, perhaps, the shock of recognizing writing that speaks to their souls.” (Booklist)“… language every bit as thrilling, rapt, and brain-waking as we could want from one of our living legends…” (Fanzine)“Patient and careful readers will be rewarded for their diligent attention to the text with a controversial, dazzling and intelligent work of literature.” (Bookreporter.com)“There is a brutal honesty to this novel, a brutal wisdom.” (Barnes & Noble's "Unabashedly Bookish")“The Marbled Swarmcumulates mystery, desire, and connections as it appears to shed mystery, desire, and connections; magic. Or sleight of hand....This book is great art.” (HTMLGIANT)“The Marbled Swarmis a mindbending masterpiece from one of my all-time favorite writers. It is vivid, slippery, ferocious, and rich with secrets. Nobody else could have written this novel and nothing else like it exists.” (Justin Taylor, author ofThe Gospel of AnarchyandEverything Here is the Best Thing Ever)“Disquieting, humbling, and sadly beautiful in the way only Dennis Cooper can be,The Marbled Swarmis a mystifying and courageous novel that represents his finest work to date.” (Patrick deWitt, author ofThe Sisters BrothersandAblutions)“This gorgeously warped brain-bender of a novel… reimagines the family romance (fathers-and-sons side only) in perfections of language that will startle and seduce you anew on every page.The Marbled Swarmis Dennis Cooper’s most genius-haunted achievement.” (Gary Lutz, author ofStories in the Worst Way)