Review
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"A fantastic debut novel.... What is so enthralling
about this novel is its syncopated riff of empathy as the
perspective jumps around these participants--some peaceful, some
violent, some determined, some incredulous... Yapa creates a
fluid sense of the riot as it washes over the city. Your Heart is
a Muscle the Size of a Fist ultimately does for WTO protests what
Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night did for the 1967 March on the
Pentagon, gathering that confrontation in competing visions of
what happened and what it meant."--Ron Charles, Washington Post
"A symphony of a novel. Sunil Yapa inhabits the skins of
characters vastly different to himself: a riot cop in Seattle, a
punk activist, a disillusioned world traveler and a high-level
diplomat, among others. Through it all Yapa showcases a raw and
rare talent. This is a protest novel which finds, at its core, a
deep and abiding regard for the music of what happens. In the
contemporary tradition of Aleksandar Hemon and Phillipp Meyer,
with echoes of Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy, Yapa strives
forward with a literary molotov cocktail to light up the
dark."--Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award winner
Let the Great World Spin
"Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is visceral,
horrifying, and often heroic. But above all, this book is a
full-throated chorus of voices on all sides--protestors, cops,
delegates, politicians, and ramblers--as democracy runs headlong
into the machinery of global power. Sunil Yapa has achieved
something special, a story that is as tragic as it is relevant,
as unflinching as it is humane."
―Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek
"Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a stunningly
orchestrated, symphonic work of narrative power. This novel
marshals all the vital forces of our existence--from the domestic
to the political--and offers them to the reader with equal doses
of compassion and beauty."―Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our
Names
"There is nothing to say about Sunil Yapa's debut novel that its
wonderful title doesn't already promise--its heart beats and
bleeds on every page, in prose so raw it feels built of muscle
and tissue and sinew and sweat. This book is delightfully,
forcefully alive, and I feel more alive for having read
it."―Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints
"An open-armed love letter to humanity, this glorious novel loops
around a burning center encompassing the warmth of parents and
the coolness of patriarchy. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a
Fist will compel you to look and then to witness. 'We are mad
with hope' the narrator says early on, and by the end the reader
is too."―Tiphanie Yanique, author of Land of Love and Drowning
"Sunil Yapa's debut novel is possibly the most gorgeous book I've
read in my entire life... Yapa's pattern of meandering, artful,
full-bodied imagery, punctuated by zingy one-liners makes for a
seriously addictive read... It's painful. It's gorgeous. I can't
say this enough: read it."
―Bustle Magazine
"A vital, powerful read, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a
Fist is an absorbing, multi-faceted, acutely hopeful
novel."―Patrick deWitt, author of Undermajordomo Minor and The
Sisters Brothers
"A great wrenching beautiful book."―Laline Paull, author of The
Bees
"Chilling...A memorable, pulse-pounding literary
experience."―Publishers Weekly
"[A] gripping debut...Yapa is a skilled storyteller, revealing
just enough about his characters and the direction of his plot to
engage his readers, yet effectively building dramatic impact by
withholding certain key details. In the style of Colum McCann's
Let the Great World Spin, Yapa ties together seemingly disparate
characters and narratives through a charged moment in history,
showing how it still affects us all in different ways."―Booklist
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About the Author
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Sunil Yapa received his MFA from Hunter College,
where he was awarded the Alumni Scholarship & Welfare Fund
Fellowship and was selected twice as the Esquire Fiction Intern.
In June 2010, he won the Asian American Short Story Award. In May
2010, Yapa was the writer-in-residence at the Norman Mailer
Writers' Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The son of a Sri
Lankan her, and a mother from Montana, Yapa grew up in
Pennsylvania, and has since traveled and lived in 48 states and
35 countries.
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