Evil Men: Short Stories

✍ Scribed by Erik Wennermark

• Publisher: ibew
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Evil Men is a series of short stories by Erik Wennermark, each detailing the exploits of an “evil man.” Some of the men are criminal, some are disturbed, some are pathetic, some are comical, but all have transgressed in some - often frightening - way. The stories are filled with inventions in language, unusual characters, and unconventional settings as they explore concepts of political and social “evil” and masculine identity. Throughout the collection, the stories shift in form and tone and length, consistently keeping readers on their toes, alert to the next twist.

Michael Martone says Evil Men “is an ambitious collection completely realized and expertly crafted. [Wennermark] renders in this Poe-ian, shaped-charged fiction a startling catalogue of very visceral and deeply disturbing tales. He is very perceptive to this world of his characters and also to the world around them and how they and their environment interact with the reality of our own reality. He is especially sensitive to the variety and complexity of the human psyche.”

This is the third (and final) incarnation of Evil Men and as such is expanded to 39 stories with dozens of illustrations. According to the author's introduction, "It's artier, stupider, prettier, beefier, and grosser. It’s more vapid, crass, and ill-mannered, while also being more intelligent, considered, and an overall more authentic picture of what I set out to achieve when I first started putting these stories together." The majority of the stories in the collection have previously been published somewhere or another, while several have won awards or been anthologized.