Eradication: A Fable - Softcover

Miles, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798217294794

Verlag: Diversified Publishing, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

From acclaimed author Jonathan Miles ("a writer so virtuosic that readers will feel themselves becoming better, more observant people from reading him"--Los Angeles Times) comes a blackly comic literary gem in which a broken man confronts a broken world on an uninhabited Pacific island.

Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician-turned-schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The assignment: to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora righting an ecological balance that's gone severely out of whack, with the aim of preserving countless bird and plant species from certain extinction. What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren't exactly what his employers said they were--and, complicating things further, he discovers he's not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island's, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies--and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it.
A desert-island meditation on the contours of love and grief and solitude, as well as jolt to your emotional core, Eradication is an utterly unforgettable reading experience, a narrative tour de force, and the work of a truly singular imagination. With this fourth work of fiction, Jonathan Miles, "a fluid, confident, and profoundly talented writer" (Dave Eggers) has truly come into his own.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JONATHAN MILES is the author of the novels Dear American Airlines and Want Not, both New York Times Notable books, and the novel Anatomy of a Miracle. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times, where he served as a columnist. In 2024 he toured as a multi-instrumentalist in the band of the Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste. He currently serves as Writer-in-Residence at the Solebury School in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

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The first sailor was beefy and tall and already sweating before the sun was risen. The second sailor was missing.

He’ll be along, the first sailor told Adi. With a flashlight jammed between his teeth he was filling out clipboarded forms and humming what sounded like a melody braked to quarter-speed, groany and dirgelike and, for Adi, unsettling in the predawn dark. The boat, a thirty-foot center console with two giant outboard motors, kept thunking the dock where Adi stood as the sailor went rummaging about the deck, opening and closing storage hatches to dash items from his checklist. He’ll be along, he repeated, though to whom it was unclear.

After a while the sailor clapped his hands together and motioned to Adi’s gear on the dock, which Adi handed down: two fat duffels, a backpack, four cellophane-sealed boxes, a pair of heavy plastic crates, a satellite phone pack, and a long thin black case secured with padlocks. There was no mistaking the latter as anything but a rifle case, and the sailor’s hum shifted to a pitchy song of vigilance as it got passed over the water. He parked it with the rest of the gear at the boat’s stern and then stood for several awkward moments shining his flashlight up at Adi.

You’re not a scientist.

No. Adi squinted, his fingers splayed against the flashlight beam. I’m not.

At this the sailor lowered his light, frowning. But soon he was nodding at Adi and grinning. Then you’re an assassin, he said, pantomiming a rifle shot. Adi could see the sailor’s broad teeth shining in the dark. A sharpshooter.

Adi shrugged.

A killer, the sailor went on, but this time so acidly that Adi found himself unable to muster any response, not even another shrug.

Just then a pair of headlights entered the harbor. Adi and the sailor watched a taxi thread its way to the dock gate, where a man dragged himself from the back seat and stood swaying, counting out bills for the driver. From the deck the first sailor snorted. I told you he’d be along, he said, but again it was unclear to whom.

The second sailor came swerving down the dock toward the boat. The first sailor whistled low and confirmed what Adi was thinking. He’s shitfaced.

You’re shitfaced! he shouted.

The second sailor brushed by Adi and wobbled onto the deck. This was the mate, Adi deduced, making the first sailor the captain. Short and bald and snake-hip skinny, the mate was the physical opposite of the captain, as in silent-movie comedy duos. He had to steady himself against the pilothouse to tuck his shirt into his pants. Only half made it in.

You’re straight from Angel’s, aren’t you? the captain said.

The mate blew the air from his cheeks and then, sour-faced, placed a palm on his chest, as though he’d tried and failed to expel something.

The captain growled, You haven’t even been home.

The mate ignored him and set himself to work. He hoisted the national flag along with another flag bearing the naval insignia. He unfolded a seat near the stern and with sharp impatient gestures motioned for Adi to board. He freed the dock lines and coiled the ropes and hauled in the fenders while inside the small open pilothouse the captain fired the engines and hummed his drowsy song.

How long will it take us? Adi asked him.

Santa Flora? Six hours. More humming. Maybe longer. Some chop in the water today.

Over the rooftops of the town was rising a thin stripe of dawn. The captain piloted the boat out of the harbor into the slate-colored sea.

Yes, Santa Flora! the captain shouted to the mate, who was leaning over the port-side gunwale, licking his lips. A nice long cruise. We should have music and beer, like at Angel’s.

We should, said the mate, though his curdled expression disagreed.

Half an hour or more passed before anyone spoke again. The captain sipped coffee and hummed and, when the radio squawked, sometimes tilted his thick head toward it. Adi found himself watching the mate, who, pressing his palms to the gunwale, kept dipping his head toward the water. From his lips swung a long rope of drool flickering neon green in the navigation lights’ glow. Adi had presumed that sailors would be immune to seasickness, but then Adi had not been around sailors before. For that matter he’d never been on a boat before, not counting the paddleboats at the capital zoo and a sunset river cruise he’d once taken with his wife. So he didn’t know.

When the captain spoke again, it was as though the previous conversation, about music and beer, had not ended—that it’d merely been paused without anyone’s thoughts drifting in the interim. And some girls too, he said. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It would, groaned the mate.

Cha cha, said the captain, swishing his backside. Cha cha cha.

Ahead Adi saw only bluish-gray water and grayish-blue sky, the water whitecapped, the sky star-flecked. Behind the boat, though, was brewing a sunrise unlike any he could remember seeing: gorgeous and streaky like some big-budget advertisement for divinity, the sky slashed with ribbons of orange and rose and peach and gold and the boat’s deck blushing pink in its reflection. In other company Adi might’ve pointed to it, voiced his awe. But the sailors had clearly seen it, and were as clearly unimpressed.

Over the rim of his coffee cup the captain was grinning at the mate, whose head now drooped overboard. Who were you with at Angel’s, huh?

Weakly, the mate waved him off.

I’ll bet Chita, the captain said. It was Chita, wasn’t it?

The mate’s body heaved.

It’s always Chita with you.

Into the sea went a gush of his insides.

The captain laughed while the mate sputtered and gagged. Poor Chita, he said. He lit a thin cigar and shook out the match. I am going to tell her you retch at just the mention of her name. I’m going to ask her if she thinks this means love.

Again the mate waved him off, before another spout of vomit left him.

We should ask Mister Killer here, the captain said, aiming his cigar at Adi. Should love make you retch?

The word killer piqued the mate. With watery eyes and a glazed chin he lifted his head to assess Adi, who knew he didn’t square with anyone’s image of a killer. He looked instead like what he had been until eleven months ago: a schoolteacher, an amateur jazz clarinetist, a husband, a father. The mate sat blinking at him.

I guess it depends on the love, Adi finally answered.

Yes! the captain shouted, as the mate went back to dangling his head overboard. It depends on the love. He nibbled his cigar and mulled this awhile, having mistaken Adi’s circumspection for profundity. Then with mock courtroom gravity he addressed the mate: Will you define for Mister Killer the nature of your love for Chita?

As if on cue, the mate retched again.

What could he love about her? The captain frowned, mimicking thought. Maybe it’s her hair. Chita has very nice hair. He wiggled his fingers around his head and grinned at the mate, who did not grin back. Silky silky.

He hummed awhile.

Or maybe, let’s see—maybe it’s that magnificent cyst on her shoulder? He turned to Adi, cupping a hand as if holding an invisible grapefruit. It’s enormous. You half expect it to talk, like a pirate’s parrot.

The mate wiped...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Diversified Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798217294794
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 177
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien