The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead

A stunningly original debut collection about lives across history marked by violence and longing.

A brother and sister turn outlaw in a wild and brutal landscape. The daughter of a diplomat disappears and resurfaces across the world as a deadly woman of many names. A young Philadelphia boy struggles with the contradictions of privilege, violence, and the sway of an incarcerated father. A monk in sixteenth century England suffers the dissolution of his monastery and the loss of all that he held sacred.

The characters in The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, Benz's wildly imaginative debut, are as varied as any in recent literature, but they share a thirst for adventure which sends them rushing full-tilt toward the moral crossroads, becoming victims and perpetrators along the way. Riveting, visceral, and heartbreaking, Benz’s stories of identity, abandonment, and fierce love come together in a daring, arresting vision.

In ten stories of impressive range, Chanelle Benz displays a staggering command of craft as she crisscrosses through time and space, from a sixteenth-century English monastery to the Wild West, to a modern-day blighted inner city, creating a complex mosaic of humanity. The characters in Benz’s wildly imaginative collection are as varied as any in recent literature, subverting boundaries of race, gender, and class, but they share a thirst for adventure, which sends them rushing toward moral crossroads, becoming victims and perpetrators along the way. Riveting, visceral, and heartbreaking, these stories of identity, abandonment, and fierce love come together in a daring, arresting vision. Benz emerges on the scene as an indomitable talent and a brilliant new literary force.

Chanelle Benz has published work in Guernica, Granta.com, The New York Times, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Fence and others, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead was published in 2017 by Ecco/HarperCollins. It was named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also shortlisted for the 2018 Saroyan Prize and longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Story Prize. Her novel The Gone Dead was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June 2019 and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Tonight Show Summer Reads Finalist. It was named a best new book of the summer by O, The Oprah Magazine, Time, Southern Living, and Nylon. She currently lives in Memphis where she teaches at Rhodes College.

• Publisher:‎ Ecco; Reprint edition (December 12, 2017)
• Language: English
• Paperback:‎ 240 pages
• ISBN-10:‎ 0062490788
• ISBN-13:‎ 9780062490780
• Item Weight:‎ 4 ounces
• UNSPSC-Code:‎ 55101500
• Dimensions:‎ 5.31 x 0.54 x 8 inches