Siege of Comedians

After graduating from Barnard College, Susan Daitch attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She has published five novels and a collection of short stories. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Black Clock, Guernica, Conjunctions, Slice, Tablet, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Bomb, The New England Review, TriQuarterly, ReDivider, The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction, and elsewhere. Daitch was a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, two Vogelstein fellowships, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and was the Eli Cantor fellow at Yaddo. Fall Out, a novella, was published by Madras Press, all proceeds donated to Women For Afghan Women.

"A moving and powerful work of art that examines mystery, identity, and displacement. Like DeLillo and Spiotta at their best, Susan Daitch is a master of style here, threading the atmospheric with the suspenseful, the strange with the mundane, and she manages to bring everything together in the end with a big payoff. One of the most exciting, original writers working today.” —Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed“Daitch’s singular genius is to take from its grimed and cobwebbed neglect what might be called the palimpsest of history and selectively restore its lines and erasures until, to our horror and delight, we begin to recognize ourselves. Siege of Comedians is a brilliant and enthralling novel, a noir diamond reflective of our collective dark history and formed under the weight of a million missing-persons cases.” —Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs“An ambitious novel ... this book charms, intrigues, and bewilders.” —Kirkus Reviews“Siege of Comedians is a book for our age and beyond, ranking in the bright realm of Ishiguro, Ondaatje, Rhys. Daitch sparks her reader with concerns deep and global, her sentences incredible as a panther’s run through beautiful and brutal fields.” —Edie Meidav, author of Crawl Space and Future Love Paradise“Brimming with mystery and graced by Daitch’s assured, wry touch, Siege of Comedians is a New York novel for the twenty-first century.” —John Keene, author of Counternarratives