The Age of Calamities: Stories

Written by an inimitable new voice, The Age of Calamitiesis a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories.

In this bold debut collection, Senaa Ahmad pushes the boundaries of history and its figures, sending the reader on a thrilling ride. In ＂Let’s Play Dead,＂ Henry VIII wants Anne Boleyn gone, but there’s a tiny problem--she keeps coming back to life no matter what he does. ＂Choose Your Own Apocalypse＂ hurls readers back to 1945, where they assume the role of a technician for the Manhattan Project, confronted with labyrinthine paths and harrowing outcomes. And ＂Inside the House of the Historian＂ invites us to a dinner party turned murder mystery full of figures like Nefertiti, Queen Victoria, John Adams, and Marilyn Monroe. These stories and others entice readers to confront the past, the present, and themselves all at once. Zany and haunting, inviting and brilliant, each poignant tale delves into the surreal and tragicomic nature of the present through the lens of yesterday.

The Age of Calamities is an evocation of life and death on history’s unsteady margins, of how to reckon with the blunt-force trauma of ill-fated times. Fiercely clever and wildly inventive, this debut establishes Senaa Ahmad as a literary force.

Senaa Ahmad’s short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Best Canadian Stories, and elsewhere. She has received the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Speculative Literature Foundation, and the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia Butler Scholarship. Her work was also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the Sunburst Award, and a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction. The Age of Calamities is her first book.