Layman's Report

“I am so, so grateful that Eugene Marten’s writing exists. Nobody else writes like he does. What a shame! Layman’s Report is full of the most strange, beautiful sentences. Marten is unafraid to look directly at the brutal things people do, but there is so much empathy lurking underneath this, too. He is a truly exceptional, one of a kind, talent.”
—Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City

“However Eugene Marten does what he does with language is from another world. You think about the end of things, of all life, at every turn of phrase. It’s not just what he renders in his characters, but how well he constructs the bleakness of the consequences the narrator faces. Like a chiaroscuro painting, Marten gently reveals what the light touches, but barely. What remains is the darkness of the story, and that is what draws the reader in.”
—Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me

“Layman’s Report is a propulsive and dazzling novel—Eugene Marten’s sculpted sentences captivate with their cadence and striking imagery. Fred Junior, an eccentric inventor of death devices turned Holocaust denier and victim of his own vanity, is one of the most enigmatic characters I have encountered in contemporary fiction.”
—Babak Lakghomi, author of South