No Exit Press - Jew by D. O. Dodd

ABOUT THE BOOK

A man regains consciousness to find himself naked in a mass grave, with no idea who he is. His thought is survival, but in a religious war survival depends on knowing which side you are on.

Donning another man's military uniform, he drives off and enters a nearby town to discover that the occupying soldiers have been waiting for someone very much like him.

Suddenly, he finds himself in power.

His first act is to save a woman about to be murdered by soldiers. The woman, as it turns out, has a history with the man, and knows more of him than he knows of himself, or does she actually have the right man?

RELATED FEATURES

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

'it's horrific, violent and deeply troubling. But it's also undeniably powerful, a thought-provoking book that lingers in the mind.'
- Jill Wilson, Winnipeg Free Press [read the full review]

'Dodd takes great aesthetic risks. JEW’s surrealism and compelling symbolism make its violence difficult to contextualize, which renders it much more discomfiting. Though the novel will inevitably upset and confound, it is also indisputably thought-provoking.'
- Devon Code, Quill & Quire [read the full review]

JEW, the third novel by D.O. Dodd, is a disturbing and enigmatic account of identity, gender, and genocide. Dodd recontextualizes seemingly familiar historical atrocities to create an aesthetically challenging, profoundly disconcerting narrative.

The novel begins with a man regaining consciousness in a mass grave with no memory of his identity. Once free from the tangle of bodies, he conveniently happens upon the body of another man who appears to be his double.

Leaving the gravesite dressed in the second man’s uniform, carrying his weapon, and driving his sedan, the protagonist rejoins the living as the commander of a village under occupation in what seems to be a religious war.

Shortly after he arrives, he saves a woman who is assaulted by soldiers and learns that she knows him intimately, or thinks she does. The protagonist’s relationship with this woman – based on remnants of a shared history overshadowed by horrific violence – becomes the focus of the cryptic,circular narrative.

The novel’s prose is spare; dialogue is sparse and often aphoristic. Though the plot is well-paced, the conundrums it poses are difficult to solve. The same questions of identity and recognition that perplex the novel’s nameless characters perplex the reader as well. The setting remains temporally and geographically ambiguous.

Despite the novel’s title, there are scant references to Judaism. The few that do appear are accompanied byreferences to Islam, which suggests that the novel’s context is not the historical Holocaust, but an allegorical amalgam of religiously motivated acts of violence.

The sexual exploitation of the oppressed – which includes humiliation, rape, and necrophilia – is the most unsettling aspect of this novel.

Women are routinely assaulted by occupying male soldiers who revel in their dominance. The novel’s depiction of sexual abjection, the doppelgänger motif, and the book’s moral complexity call to mind Albert Sánchez Piñol’s gothic horror novel Cold Skin.

Dodd takes great aesthetic risks. JEW’s surrealism and compelling symbolism make its violence difficult to contextualize, which renders it much more discomfiting. Though the novel will inevitably upset and confound, it is also indisputably thought-provoking.

Devon Code, Quill & Quire

'An astonishing work marked by its stark and stripped stylistic attack... Few manage to make volumes where structure and content echo each other exponentially, shaping a third work of sorts'
- Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe & Mail [read the full review]

'Rivetting, horrific, poetic brilliance.'
- Michael Turner, author of The Pornographers Poem [read the full review]

'A starkly brutal existential journey into power, guilt, identity, bureaucracy and the darkest corners of the human soul.'
- Michael Mirolla, author of Berlin [read the full review]

'mysterious and Kafkaesque... worth the attention of anyone who takes pleasure in enigmatic literature'
- metaljew.org [read the full review]

'a brave and original writer'
- Joseph Kertes, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Gratitude [read the full review]

'This is our world turned on its head, and wonderfully writ. Astonishing.'
- Linda Spalding, author of Who Named the Knife, co-editor of Brick Magazine

'a haunting and powerful read. '
- Jill Murphy, thebookbag.co.uk [read the full review]

'a dark and shocking novel that, while not to everyone’s taste, deserves a wide readership'
- Carol Treasure, welovethisbook.com [read the full review]

'Deep, thoughtful and original'
- Giovanni Ziccardi, Saturno/ il Fatto Quotidiano - Italy [read the full review]

'A brilliant page-turner'
- Jean Mead, author of The Widow Makers [read the full review]

'a highly uncomfortable and at times profoundly disturbing read, but one that will certainly make you think long after you have turned the final page'
- Cheryl, madhouse family reviews blog [read the full review]

'dark, shocking, compelling, terrifying and pretty ruthless'
- Anne Cater, readitswapit [read the full review]

'pertinent, opportune and topical'
- Jayne Southern [read the full review]