“Daniel Khalastchi’s first prize-winning book, Manoleria, might best be approached through a combination of folkloristic motif and Kafka, especially The Prisoner. The beauty of the book is that there is nothing, really, specifically political about it, and yet, like Kafka, it is entirely political. In contrast to Fabu’s Journey, there is likewise no specific setting or period. No specific reality, even, except the narrative I, which is not the author, not anyone, not even, much of the time, recognizably human—except in the fact of the identity’s continued use of, and enunciation through, language. And yet, in the cheery attempt to adapt to and cooperate with every horror that occurs in the confined landscape of his own constantly changing, tortured, suffering body, he is Everyman.” —Wendy Vardaman, Verse Wisconsin

“He tackles the natural world and its forthcoming disintegration with a striking physically ill narrator, who leads his readers through wild and potentially destructive surroundings. His protagonist—distinctly masculine with eerily feminine echoes—struggles with babies, tails, rot and decay emanating from his sickly frame. The environment revolts and attacks our speaker with hysterical call girls, eroding sands, and torn limbs—both of the body and of the surrounding trees.” —Megan Fishmann, Algonquin Books Blog