The Others

Winner of the Twelfth Annual Believer Book Award

A gripping, eerie, and hilarious novel-in-verse from poet Matthew Rohrer. In a Russian-doll of fictional episodes, we follow a midlevel publishing assistant over the course of a day as he encounters ghost stories, science fiction adventures, Victorian hashish eating, and robot bigfoots. Rohrer mesmerizes with wildly imaginative tales and resonant verse in this compelling love letter to storytelling.

this night
they all seemed asleep
for a while the stark shadows
held me
only my mind moved

wildly behind my eyes
until I heard a tiny
song coming from the driver
song of a bandit’s broken
heart, song of his betrayal
I slept and dreamed I was awake