Brechtian (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798318851308)

Fifteen Stories. Fifteen Worlds. One Voice That Refuses to Behave.

Brechtian is a daring, wildly original anthology of flash fiction from Asher Rush - a collection that talks back to you, breaks the fourth wall mid-sentence, and dares you to keep up. Across fifteen stories, Rush leaps from farce to heartbreak, from bloody action to biblical tragedy, from a Cupid who's lost the ability to love to a monster learning what it means to be human.

The collection opens in its Action section with X, a self-dubbed "near miss assassin" who wakes battered in a hospital bed, trading flirtations with a sharp-tongued nurse before he can feel his broken ribs. A trained killer who has never once completed a job, X is a walking contradiction - and his trademark failures turn out to be acts of quiet rebellion against the world that forged him. From there the section spirals into a villager hanged for the crime of honesty, and a reluctant vampire cursed to become something worse.

The Romance/Love section trades bullets for something stranger and more tender: a Cupid who cannot fall in love, a wraith haunting a preacher wracked with guilt for condemning the innocent to the witch trials, a beast bargaining for humanity, a woman named Naomi, unseen and brought to her lowest, climbing her own stairway to heaven in a retelling of the book of Joab, and a lonely tombstone named Epitaph who outlives every friend he makes. These are love stories in the widest sense - stories about longing, belonging, faith, and the ache of being misunderstood.

The collection closes on its most audacious note: a retelling of the biblical prince Avshalom, the beautiful traitor, reimagined with all of Rush's irreverence and heart - a son at war with his father, a rebellion born of love, and a king dying with no regrets and every regret at once.

Rush writes for the curious reader - the one willing to be unsettled, amused, and moved in the span of a few pages. Every story is a different world, a different voice, and a different question about what it means to be human. Some will make you laugh. Some will break something open. All of them will keep you guessing.

Brechtian invites you in, one unpredictable story at a time.