The Marbled Swarm

From an award-winning author comes a novel that's “a mesmerizing, labyrinthine tour through an especially hellish father-son relationship” (Vanity Fair).

“An American master. . . . Cooper is the most important transgressive literary artist since Burroughs.” —Salon

In secret passageways, hidden rooms, and the troubled mind of our narrator, a mystery perpetually takes shape—and the most compelling clue to its final nature is “the marbled swarm” itself, a complex amalgam of language passed down from father to son.

Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. And as the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.

“Provocative . . . Cooper’s interest in the darkest corners of the human experience . . . has not dimmed with age. The novel’s contradictory narratives intentionally echo the secret passageways in which the narrator’s predatory activities take place, creating a baroque, voyeuristic effect.” —New Yorker

“The Marbled Swarm is concerned as much with language as it is with relationships and power. . . . His fantastical story of everyday cannibalism is told in such finely chiseled yet disorienting prose that you suspect you’re being led into a maze.” —OUT Magazine

“Lies somewhere in between Lolita and Dracula, mixing the gothic terror and disturbing subject of both, within a contemporary bi-sexual, skinny jeaned, iPhone-totting environment, and a much further push of the envelope.” —The Coffin Factory