Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

The core relationships, whether they’re between estranged childhood friends or opinionated superhumans, are real and profoundly moving. Some might find Lim’s ( The Strangers) bricolage style too disorienting, but others will revel in how it mirrors the characters’ alienation and confused search for answers. Dear Cyborg by eugenelim from fsgbooks So think that a protest, Were thrilled to congratulate our author Eugene Lim, winner of the 2023 Association. Eugene Lim's Dear Cyborgs is a mad badass fan letter to comicdom and a chastening reminder of how America’s greatest fantasy doesn't involve superheroes with superpowers but the prospect of a fair and honest political life. His writing has appeared in Fence, the Denver Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail, & elsewhere.

Eugene Lim is the author of three works of fiction. Meanwhile, in an alternative universe, superheroes ponder modern society. Back in “reality,” the narrator marries, divorces, and has a child, but a sharp awareness of Vu’s absence continues to haunt him, which makes their coincidental reunion (and the retrospective depth that it adds to the superheroes’ conversations) an immensely satisfying closing chapter. In Dear Cyborgs, two boys bond over their outcast status & a mutual love of comic books.

The story’s focus abruptly shifts to the superheroes known as Team Chaos, who dine in Thai restaurants and sing karaoke amidst discussions of Occupy Wall Street, diversification as assimilation, performance artist Tehching Hsieh, activist Richard Aoki, and more. Opening in suburban Ohio, the first chapter describes the intense bond formed, mostly over comic books, between the narrator and his classmate, Vu, before a sudden move to Chicago separates them. Two radically different story lines-one involving a short-lived friendship between two Asian-American boys in the Midwest, the other an ongoing philosophical debate amongst a team of superheroes-are cleverly tied together in this short, sly, unorthodox novel. Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs is a novel of ideas, small, elegant ideas about art and protest, and one of the most striking literary works to emerge from the Occupy movement.

Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim