PRAISE FOR PARADOX TWINS

"Chaplinsky takes a famous physics paradox and brings it back down to earth, using it to rethink the ways in which families relate and interrelate and disintegrate. A collage that assembles itself into a sneaky whole in which it's not always easy to tell what the truth is."

—Brian Evenson, author of Song For the Unraveling of the World

“As confirmed by The Paradox Twins, Joshua Chaplinsky is one of a handful of American novelists creating the literature of the future: dazzling, original and subversive.”

—Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville and Shadowbahn

“Like a coy, uncanny hybrid of J.G. Ballard and John Carpenter, the Oulipo and the Bizarro, The Paradox Twins is an engrossing and digressive trip through birth and back, stuffed from end to end with mystic weirdness and meta-gags with style to spare.”

—Blake Butler, author of Alice Knott and 300,000,000

“Family, like life (and fiction!), requires some assembly. And in the skewed, dark, strangely tender landscape of The Paradox Twins, all the pieces are placed in the reader's hands." 

—Kathe Koja, author of The Cipher

"Every once in a while a shoebox novel has an understory. The Paradox Twins goes even deeper, is pretty much multiphasic — how much more meta can it get? Chaplinsky is here to show you."

—Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels and The Only Good Indians

"A daring and inventive novel that does justice to the complicated nature of all stories, and all entanglements. Chaplinsky plays with form and structure like a pro, giving us a book that is many books—a haunting collage you might re-read the moment you've finished it."

—Lindsay Lerman, author of I’m From Nowhere

“A brain-bending epistolary work that defies genre, format and expectation, The Paradox Twins is part family drama, part sci-fi epic, part ghost story, and wholly original. Chaplinsky writes with bright, irreverent strangeness, but the most outlandish moments of this story never keep the reader at a distance or numb the emotional impact. We're right there with Max and Alan as they navigate the thorny mystery of their lives, their father's death, and their relationship to one another and to the world.”

—Meredith Borders, FANGORIA

"Imagine if you put Roshomon, Chuck Palahniuk, House of Leaves, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and the dysfunctional family dramedy of Wes Anderson into a blender. That's Joshua Chaplinsky's The Paradox Twins, a crackling new novel whose every twist and turn lands with emotionally-satisfying precision. Buy this book."

—Scott Wampler, THE KINGCAST

“A debut novel that discovers brand new territory and claims it as its own."

—Sadie Hartmann, aka Mother Horror

"...a stunningly complex and lovingly crafted book about the unfathomable mystery of family and how it evolves over time."

—Matt Hill, INVERT/EXTANT

“Chaplinsky has annihilated the traditional novel narrative — never before have I had such a blast sifting through the rubble. Like an American Borges writing science fiction as directed by Wes Anderson. An achievement of challenging experiment with surprisingly mainstream appeal.”

—Gabriel Hart, author of A Return to Spring

The Paradox Twins is a copyright infringing biographical collage that exists on the Internet, pieced together by an unknown auteur.

Named for the famous thought experiment, it concerns estranged twin brothers who reunite at their father’s funeral to discover they no longer look alike. Haunted by the past (and possibly the future), they move into their father’s house to settle his affairs, only to reignite old rivalries and uncover long-hidden secrets, most of which involve the young woman who lives next door.  

An epistolary work comprised of excerpts from various memoirs, novels, screenplay adaptations, and documents of public record, The Paradox Twins is an experimental, sci-fi ghost story about the scariest, most unknowable quantity there is—family.

ISBN: 9781944866815