Inhale: A Novel in Stories Volume 25

Inhale is a novel in stories that accumulate until they begin to answer one another: a prologue pulled from static; sutures counted down to the last in triage; permits that rename the living. Here, paperwork decides who moves and who disappears, and those who forge it are not criminals so much as locksmiths: They make the dead mobile so the living can cross.

From Gaza's checkpoints to basements that sweat salt, seawater pools behind the teeth--carried without swallowing, held without speaking. A death certificate is stamped on a body still breathing. Grandma scratches years beneath bowls--1948, 1967, 1987--and lifts one to your ear. In Khan Younis, Shireen stitches; in Shifa, a widow asks for her husband's papers. Forgetting never gets cheaper here. The sea doesn't translate; it transmits. You open--just the mouth--hold the water, unspilled, and inhale.

"I devoured Inhale the same way the characters in war-ravaged Gaza devour pilfered drugs. The prose is reminiscent of Bruno Schultz, the doomed Polish magic realist who was murdered by the Nazis while still a young man. In Gaza the honey tastes of gunpowder because the bees have sipped from bullet holes; you might dream of leaning to retrieve a dropped spoon in an ice cream shop, only to have your head burst into shrapnel. It's a place where sunlight breaks on razor wire like cold splinters of gin, and cemeteries smell of crushed mint. There is a ruthless honesty in these stories, and also a ruthless beauty. I want to press Inhale into the hands of every reader."--Patricia Henley, judge and author of Apple & Palm and Hummingbird House (National Book Award Finalist)

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Published: 11/15/2026
ISBN: 9798898290160
Pages: 288