Restlessness — Aritha Van Herk

Desperate to find a home, a restless, wandering woman determines that the only way she can appease her terrible homesickness is to occupy the still center of death. Unable to commit suicide, she hires a professional killer and contracts him to murder her, by her choice and on her terms.

Restlessness chronicles their meeting and its unexpected story and outcome. In an effort to dissuade the woman from death, her killer elicits from her stories about her travels.

In this reversal of Sheherazade, who saves her life through a continuous story, Restlessness becomes a story about how to avoid story, a travel book about how to evade travel, a manual for how to stay put. Breathtaking in the tension of its incipient murder, this novel will not permit the reader to break the thread of watching and waiting that both death and travel conjure.