These people who think they are something, they are really not. They come and go wrapped like gypsies at a carnival, sounding like artists, smelling of mildew. I can’t take them anymore.
In Christiania, Copenhagen's anarchist village and infamous tourist destination, a Pusher Street regular nears the end of the line. With locals decamping and outsiders encroaching, he can no longer subsist on hash sales and a chillum. but even hard up and hungry, he sees lost love in the moon, revels in a comrade's garbled rants, tangles with the Big Man and, as winter gets the best of him, still believes a grimy commune can be heaven on earth.
“Anarchy rules in Fred Leebron's artful unsettling WELCOME TO CHRISTIANIA.” - Vanity Fair
"In a prose as brave, straightforward and honest as his vision, the narrator takes us on a fascinating journey as he crosses the portal and pulls us into the wonder and madness of Christinia as mirrored through his troubled psyche. - J.A.”
". . .The voice of Leebron’s narrator is minimalist, existential, and raw, and the advance praise comparisons to early Denis Johnson and the French existentialists are apt... [Welcome to Christiania] is a long and stark prose poem about living on the margins of accepted society. Leebron’s narrator, like all of Christiania’s residents, is a person without a country, someone for whom living is synonymous with the freedom to define freedom for one’s self. Leebron’s ode to Freetown Christiania and its slowly dying dreamers is well worth the visit."
- Leland Cheuk at Necessary Fiction
Advance praise
“Fred Leebron is one of the best writers working today. If you haven't read him yet, this beautifully written novel is the one to get first. WELCOME TO CHRISTIANIA is the story of a brilliant misanthrope's search for a paradise on earth, and Leebron perfectly captures every moment of exhilaration and despair along the way. You'll be amazed at how much life he has packed into this short yet emotionally expansive book.”
- Jenny Offill
"Take a pinch of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, another of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, sprinkle in a little Breece D'J Pancake, roll it all together and you might be getting close to the dark, heady buzz of Fred Leebron's WELCOME TO CHRISTIANIA. Except even those affinities don't do justice to this singular book--its prose, popping and fizzing like static, and its searching, mordant vision of humanity. This is a sharp, intense hit of fiction from a major talent."
- Peter Ho Davies
“WELCOME TO CHRISTIANIA is a marvelous, perceptive prose poem about endless drift; we can all recognize ourselves as travelers in the same danse macabre. Fred Leebron has written a funny, tingling nightmare. He has his own rare gift.”
- Jerome Charyn
"'The world is not the place it used to be,' correctly observes the nameless narrator of this acidly brilliant tale of society's tag end and the refuseniks who inhabit it. Fred Leebron is an American Celine; his deep distrust of sentimental convention makes his eye pitiless and exact."
- Jonathan Dee
Events:
May 20, 6:30 pm, A Cappella Books, Atlanta
May 29, 3:00 pm, Scuppernong Books, Greensboro
Fred Leebron has published several novels and numerous short stories, and has received both a Pushcart Prize and an O. Henry Award; he is also co-editor of Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology and co-author of Creating Fiction: A Writer’s Companion. He directs writing programs in Charlotte, Roanoke, Europe, Latin America, and Gettysburg.
Welcome to Christiania
Fred Leebron
97 pages
$12.00 paperback ISBN 9781937402853
$5.00 ebook
February 2016
These people who think they are something, they are really not. They come and go wrapped like gypsies at a carnival, sounding like artists, smelling of mildew. I can’t take them anymore.. . .. . .
Facebook
Twitter