Roberto Saviano

#2

I was familiar with Sherwin Carlquist's scientific production, which I find to be very clearly written and approachable despite it being catered to technical audiences. In this collection of short stories, I was completely amazed to find Dr. Carlquist's prose is even more entertaining and captivating than you would expect from a scientist. As a trans non-binary person who lived many years as a gay man, and as someone who has studied Dr. Carlquist's work for their own research, I feel that this book provided me with a very inspiring perspective of the man behind the science: someone unabashedly queer who wanted to tell uplifting queer stories so that future generations of gay men could imagine themselves living fulfilling lives.

#3

Somewhere in a future time and place, people have no names. Lovers find this inconvenient, so they begin naming each other. The two main characters settle on the following names: the woman is the Nakajima Miyuki Song Book, and the man, who teaches at a poetry school, is Sayonara, Gangsters. Their cat, who prefers milk-and-vodka and is a great fan of Aristotle, is named Henry IV. The first of the book's three parts tells the story of Sayonara, Gangsters's former lover, "the woman," and their daughter, named both Caraway and Green Pinky. In the second section, Sayonara, Gangster explains his work at the poetry school. The last section is an action-filled account of three gangsters who come to be taught poetry and who are killed after a gunfight with a detachment of armored police.