The Poison That Purifies You

An Italian soul-seeker in India encounters an antique racist toy-bank from 19th-Century America and believes it to be an incarnation of Krishna. A fertility-seeking single woman in New York's Chinatown becomes fixated on a Chinese boy and plots a kidnap. An American archaeologist suffers from under-medicated bipolar disease after the 1976 earthquake in Guatemala. A New Yorker interprets the small earthquake of 2011 as a sign of conspiracy, and her obsession masks feelings of grief surrounding the disappearance of her self-destructive twin sister. Following the existential mystery of Paul Auster, Paul Bowles' critique of the tourist, and Flannery O'Connor's redemptive grotesques, Kadetsky adds a sharp and nuanced voice to the short story, calling upon her extensive travels abroad and study of languages for a portrayal of innocents often caught in the tangles of global alliance and discord.