Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea

Tor.com Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2024

“…it’s written with a passion, a love for literary fiction. And it’s this love, infectious in quality, that saw me buy all that Rose has written and why you should get your hands on Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea.” – Locus Magazine

“The writing is dark and dreamlike, filled with philosophical tangents, evocative metaphors, black comedy, and sly metatextual references…The stories in Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea position art as an antidote to the ravages of time, with a subtle sense of imagination suggesting that, even through the grimmest moods, nothing is impossible.” – Foreword

“wit, range, and sheer absurdity…extremely funny…quite affecting…compelling” – PopMatters

“Taut, serene prose draws the reader into the labyrinthine world of these obliquely connected stories … Rose presents his finest works yet.” —Booklist

“A book that belongs on the same shelf as Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, and several works by Zoran Zivkovic, Stanislaw Lem and David Markson.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“This well-rounded assemblage manages to be both entertaining and thought-provoking.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Adventuresome readers will enjoy this hard-to-pigeonhole collection of 19 short stories.” –Shelf Awareness

“Disgruntled photographers, bored philosophers, and a social media-obsessed Saint Augustine star in these teasing, twisty tales, where uncanny coincidences abound and narratives meander into surreal meta-fiction.” – Daily Mail UK