Avatar

Fiction. The literature of the dispossessed has found its most stirring contemporary avatar in Evan Lavender-Smith's brief tour de force of grief and solitude. Someone is floating in the depths of space with little more than his or her thoughts, tears, and strands of hair for company; nothing more than two stars—one in front, one behind—for guidance. How long has he or she been in this condition? How did it come about? For how long will it remain? Distances of a second and a century collide to reveal a present moment beholden only to the broken clock of thought. In a mesmerizing and unforgettable monologue, the speaker of AVATAR describes a mode of living and thinking sustained at the very precipice of being.