Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots (SIGNED)

Damien Wood's path to adulthood in the last decade of the 20th century is marked with effortless success--creative, financial, sexual. Yet his half-Asian lineage with its inherent cultural clashes is coupled with the inability to be touched by feelings or the people around him. Damien's efforts to reach his inner self take him from place to place and one hollow relationship to another, but he remains stuck outside of his experiences, a robot convincingly playing the role of daredevil artist and globetrotter.Then, the century turns. As Damien's mother dies after a long and agonizing illness, and 9/11 inaugurates a reign of fear and terror, his emotions, from desire to despair, begin to emerge unbidden. These birth pangs of humanity send Damien on a mordantly comic, darkly suspenseful quest from the Americas through Southeast Asia in the company of an expatriate colony with too little to lose - including values - until violence comes to claim him as one of its own. No longer a robot, Damien has become a wanted man.A daring hybrid of adventure, verse, and travel fiction, framed by a chronicle of self-revelation in a pitch-perfect voice for the post-millennium, this book heralds the return of a novelist of impressive literary gifts.

Kent Evans is the author of Malas Ondas, a novel about self-destruction throughout Latin America. He was a fixture on the spoken word art scene throughout the 90's. His work has appeared in numerous national pop-culture and literary zines and publications. Kent's current artistic endeavors include performing poetry with music in a live trip/hop jazz format.