Scars — Stephen Elliott

The news media can't help but leave out a certain personal element from every story. Reading fiction gives us the freedom to envision unlikely connections between characters, overhear conversations in bedrooms and on neighborhood streets, focus in on a child's thoughts, and linger in unfamiliar places. Politically Inspired is a collection of thirty original short stories, cartoons, and illustrations that illuminate many of the political events and questions of our time. Each of these inventive fictional worlds offers a new perspective on today's politics of fear, desire, and destruction. We see the President of the United States wake up as a fifth-grader in Minneapolis, peek into a classroom where young boys wear burqas, and read an endearingly eccentric letter to a girlfriend lost on a hijacked plane. Both highly imaginative and deeply relevant, 'Politically Inspired' reveals the myriad ways in which politics shapes our everyday lives.“September 11, the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq... Why not explore our new reality through fiction, the truest gauge of the national psyche? That was Elliott's bright idea. And the result? A deeply impressive collection of 26 previously unpublished stories... A superb collection, without a single dud. Grab it.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred)