Food for Jackals: Three Short Novels
Ebook
These novellas track three meaning-making, moral skirmishes: a thickening tennis pro on the Florida-New York teaching circuit grapples with weakening personal commitments and a fading serve; a dispirited short-term Coast Guard reservist struggles with the ambiguity of an accidental murder on an icebreaker heading to the arctic; and an American vacuum sewers entrepreneur and a local archeologist explore the exploitation of women, art, and sexual comedy in Venice, Italy.
"In intricately wrought novellas, John Zeugner gives us
characters who we're glad we're not, but whom we love to watch be
put through their paces. Like Frank, the tennis player, they
achieve their petty victories. Like Seaman Spradlin, they are
inadequate when faced with moral dilemmas. Like Claudio/Hugh, they
are vain puffs, more interested in self-gratification than in the
higher causes they pretend to espouse. No alignment with club or
country, on any level, can fully redeem them."
--Lee Fontanella, 2009 Andrew Carnegie Centenary Professor for
Scotland, Scotland, UK
Product Details
- Title : Food for Jackals: Three Short Novels
- Author: Zeugner, John
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Publication Date: 2014
- ISBN: 9781630872168
John Zeugner, Emeritus Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and one-time tennis professional, has co-advised art restoration and environmental projects at WPI's Venice Project Center for over three decades. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Grant for Fiction, he has published a novel, Soldier for Christ (2013), and a prizewinning collection of short stories, Under Hiroshima (2014). His articles, short stories, and film and concert reviews have also appeared in literary journals and newspapers.