Editor“Absurdist humour and existential noir intermingle in Joseph Scapellato’s playful and intelligent debut novel about a soul-searching archaeology school drop-out who finds himself at the centre of a strange and risky performance art project in the Czech Republic.
Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Scapellato, who now lives in Pennsylvania, is an assistant professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. His previous work, the critically acclaimed story collection Big Lonesome, received high praise from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and the Lancashire Post, with the New York Times proclaiming: ‘Scapellato’s inventive, hallucinatory prose dazzles.’
His newest work is a wholly original hybrid of a detective story and a subverted examination of oneself, with the narrator – much like a previous character from Scapellato’s story collection – reflecting on his past, trying to make sense of the present, and exploring the myth of the self.
Surprising and innovative and unlike any other novel you have seen before, the deviously warped literary noir The Made-Up Man is an unpredictable and thought-provoking tale of deception, love, and identity that is well-worth investigating.”
Nicholas Litchfield’s review of Scapellato’s The Made-Up Man is featured today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. You can read the review here.
