Week 16 Recap: Disintegration Wins Plain and Easy
Disintegration Made Plain and Easy wins with surreal, sly tenderness
Disintegration Made Plain and Easy by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi flew above the competition with pop culture callouts, cartoon revenge fantasies, and a metamorphic wink at the abyss, all tucked into a respectable antique cover sure to lure unsuspecting entomologists like moths to a deranged flame. I read it. I laughed out loud. I want more.
Week 16 Winner: Disintegration Made Plain and Easy by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
Congrats to Kiik and the Piżama Press team!
Week 17: New Folk
This week’s contenders weave a tapestry of modern folklore. Rooted in place, steeped in history, and alive with the voices who carry the tales forward, these covers hum with the old magic of storytelling, remade for today.
- The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher (Ballantine Books, Apr 23, 2024): A cobalt-blue birth, a family’s soap-making legacy, and a queer love story spanning exile and inheritance.
- Guatemalan Rhapsody by Jared Lemus (Ecco, Mar 4, 2025): Sharp, tender stories of modern Guatemala, where loyalty, love, and survival collide in unexpected ways.
- Mazurka for Two Dead Men by Camilo José Cela (New Directions, Feb 26, 2019): A rural Spanish epic of vengeance, memory, and music, told in contrapuntal bursts of brutality and lyricism.
- Stories of the True by Jeyamohan (FSG Originals, Aug 12, 2025): A dozen incandescent tales from one of Tamil literature’s greats, blurring fact, fiction, and the deeper truths in between.
Week 17 Lineup
Voting is open now through Sunday at 10pm ET. Send a link to all the folk.
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Will Pass
Book Jacket Bracket Guy