ISHAM COOK

Literary provocations

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Isham Cook China

  • Lust & Philosophy. A novel (ch. 1)

    “I first saw her one spring day on my way to afternoon coffee near People’s University.”

  • Lust & Philosophy. A novel (ch. 2)

    “To seize the event, lock its meat and bones in my jaws and relax into the thing.”


  • Lust & Philosophy. A novel (ch. 3)

    “Success is never haphazard but only ever proceeds from comprehensive and systematic attack.”

  • Lust & Philosophy. A novel (ch. 4)

    “Kind of like Hot Wheels and tits and the Day of Judgment all rolled into one.”

  • Lust & Philosophy. A novel (ch. 5)

    “Each new walk down the stretch was charged with expectation, at once a cornucopia and a minefield of possibilities.”

  • Lust & Philosophy. A novel (ch. 6)

    “In the town center lawn is a crazy quilt of motley freaks smoking pot and playing guitar.”

  • The Tao of Poison. Ch. 2: The Haunted Pagoda

    A cleaver and a silver tael given her by her father were all that weighed down the sack hanging from her shoulders as Qiezi forded the river at its narrowest crossing. Now on the opposite bank she scarcely halted her pace except that she was hungry, the family meal aborted by the unfortunate events of…

  • The Tao of Poison. Ch. 1: The Poison Maiden

    Swinging down her sack, Qiezi dumped out her bloodstained rags and began washing them. She worked with practiced speed, but the current would move many li downstream before all were restored to pristine gray, rinsed out and stacked on the old slab of rock beside her. Squatting, she loosened her pants’ cotton sash and pulled…