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""Determined readers will revel in the sheer fecundity of ideas in this fiercely imaginative acid trip of an allegory."" –Publishers Weekly ""A slight but quick-witted and thoughtful philosophical parable that falls somewhere between Camus and Gaiman’s Sandman universe."" –Kirkus Reviews “The Eyelid spins a rich and rewarding political fantasy out of this anxiety over the colonization of dreams and the subconscious by corporate power.” –Toronto Star ""This is a novel of ideas and warnings, not a simple theoretical thriller that blooms in the mind as an ephemeral bottle rocket only to fizzle and leave the reader seeking the next entertainment."" –The Rupture ""S. D. Chrostowska’s The Eyelid is an exquisite piece of literature which might well become an instant cult book until it makes its way to a much deserved place at the top of any list of utopian-dystopian fiction masterworks."" –Full Stop ""S. D. Chrostowska achieves unexpected buoyancy in spite of the intensity of her material. Permission, certain to be among the most formally adventurous books published this year, will thrill readers of fearless stylists like Blanchot, Barthes, and Anne Carson. In its obsessive intricacy, it evokes even earlier forbears: those wonderfully melancholy European humanists, Thomas Browne and Robert Burton.' Every Library is a haunted cemetery,' writes F. Wren, the narrator of Permission. This fine and perplexing novel is itself something between a library and a cemetery, spinning around the hauntings of desire, the confusions of memory, the ambiguities of solitude and, above all, the mystery of writing."" –Teju Cole ""Always provocative, Chrostowska investigates the notion that dreaming itself can be a subversive act."" –Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire

Praise for Matches The vision of history illuminating these pages is not the conventional one of progress, but the much more radical one of Rousseauism: a 'left-wing nostalgia' that performs a detour through the past--a world anterior to privilege and hypocrisy--with the aim not of restoring it, but of giving it a radically new form. --Michael Loewy, Le Monde diplomatique ...Chrostowska has written in Matches a refreshing, consistently thoughtful work that usefully questions entrenched assumptions about the nature of criticism... --Daniel K. Green, LA Review of Books There are books that have the ability to throw your whole life into question, but these are the terms of engagement.... In the weeks I spent reading Matches I was more jittery than usual, my mind constantly reeling. I felt like I was on the edge of something, though I could not tell what that might be. I am always behaving badly, but this was different. I wanted to quarrel, I needed to question everything. Books seemed to be ruining my life....But I love changing my mind. --Anna Zalokostas, Full Stop A truly thorough examination of Matches A Light Book would map all the terrain and take an unusual form: a multi-week course containing lectures, slides, video, theatre, playtime, and interactivity. S. D. Chrostowska is a writer of importance, and with this work she has raised her own personal bar. --Jeff Bursey, Numero Cinq A must-read for aficionados of the fragment and of literary critical experiments for the breadth of its subject matter and its style. --Alexander Kluge S.D. Chrostowska's Matches A Light Book is a lambent marvel. The text interlaces a finely wrought poetic sensibility with a rare conceptual acuity. The literary beauty and philosophical rigor that permeate Chrostowska's apodictic constellation of fragments, aphorisms, and thought-images make her work a worthy heir to a tradition of transformative aphoristic writing and thinking that includes such masterpieces as Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, Benjamin's One-Way Street, Adorno's Minima Moralia, Bloch's Traces, and Blanchot's The Writing of the Disaster. The many matches that the text lights never fail to illuminate--and in the process also to consume--the heterogeneous thoughts and experiences to which they attend. Chrostowska's high-wire literary performance reminds us that, in our administered world of techno-capitalist sameness, the last word may not yet have been spoken after all. --Gerhard Richter, Brown University An elegant and agile meditation on thinking, writing and reading in the twenty-first century. Chrostowska's sharp and original Matches will light readers' imaginations on fire and keep them burning long after they've put the book down. --Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, University of Alberta The novel, of course, is a warning of what is to come or what in large part has already come for us, its readers. Where do the opacities of sleep and the images and tales that our dreams are full of find reference in the world we inhabit? --Leonardo S. D. Chrostowska achieves unexpected buoyancy in spite of the intensity of her material. Permission, certain to be among the most formally adventurous books published this year, will thrill readers of fearless stylists like Blanchot, Barthes, and Anne Carson. In its obsessive intricacy, it evokes even earlier forbears: those wonderfully melancholy European humanists, Thomas Browne and Robert Burton.' Every Library is a haunted cemetery, ' writes F. Wren, the narrator of Permission. This fine and perplexing novel is itself something between a library and a cemetery, spinning around the hauntings of desire, the confusions of memory, the ambiguities of solitude and, above all, the mystery of writing. --Teju Cole Determined readers will revel in the sheer fecundity of ideas in this fiercely imaginative acid trip of an allegory. --Publishers Weekly Always provocative, Chrostowska investigates the notion that dreaming itself can be a subversive act. --Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire A slight but quick-witted and thoughtful philosophical parable that falls somewhere between Camus and Gaiman's Sandman universe. --Kirkus Reviews The Eyelid spins a rich and rewarding political fantasy out of this anxiety over the colonization of dreams and the subconscious by corporate power. --Toronto Star

Praise for Permission (Dalkey Archive Press, July 2013): S. D. Chrostowska achieves unexpected buoyancy in spite of the intensity of her material. Permission, certain to be among the most formally adventurous books published this year, will thrill readers of fearless stylists like Blanchot, Barthes, and Anne Carson. In its obsessive intricacy, it evokes even earlier forbears: those wonderfully melancholy European humanists, Thomas Browne and Robert Burton. 'Every Library is a haunted cemetery, ' writes F. Wren, the narrator of Permission. This fine and perplexing novel is itself something between a library and a cemetery, spinning around the hauntings of desire, the confusions of memory, the ambiguities of solitude and, above all, the mystery of writing. -- Teju Cole (endorsement) One of the most intellectually bracing, technically fascinating Canadian-authored novels of the year. -- Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire (named as one of his top five fiction titles of 2013) A complex, elusive, perplexing, and, at times, bold work that alternated between thrilling possibilities and frustrating gestures, but always a work that begged to be deeply pondered and reread. -- Terry Pitts, 3: AM

S. D. Chrostowska achieves unexpected buoyancy in spite of the intensity of her material. Permission, certain to be among the most formally adventurous books published this year, will thrill readers of fearless stylists like Blanchot, Barthes, and Anne Carson. In its obsessive intricacy, it evokes even earlier forbears: those wonderfully melancholy European humanists, Thomas Browne and Robert Burton.' Every Library is a haunted cemetery,' writes F. Wren, the narrator of Permission. This fine and perplexing novel is itself something between a library and a cemetery, spinning around the hauntings of desire, the confusions of memory, the ambiguities of solitude and, above all, the mystery of writing. -Teju Cole The Eyelid spins a rich and rewarding political fantasy out of this anxiety over the colonization of dreams and the subconscious by corporate power. -Toronto Star The novel, of course, is a warning of what is to come or what in large part has already come for us, its readers. Where do the opacities of sleep and the images and tales that our dreams are full of find reference in the world we inhabit? -Leonardo Determined readers will revel in the sheer fecundity of ideas in this fiercely imaginative acid trip of an allegory. -Publishers Weekly A slight but quick-witted and thoughtful philosophical parable that falls somewhere between Camus and Gaiman's Sandman universe. -Kirkus Reviews Always provocative, Chrostowska investigates the notion that dreaming itself can be a subversive act. -Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire

Author Information

S. D. Chrostowska is Professor of Humanities and Social & Political Thought at York University, Toronto. She is the author of Literature on Trial: The Emergence of Critical Discourse in Germany, Poland, and Russia, 1700–1800 (2012); Permission: A Novel (2013); and Matches: A Light Book (2015, 2nd enlarged ed. 2019), and co-editor of Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives (2017). She currently lives in Toronto. S. D. Chrostowska is Professor of Humanities and Social & Political Thought at York University, Toronto. She is the author of Literature on Trial: The Emergence of Critical Discourse in Germany, Poland, and Russia, 1700–1800 (2012); Permission: A Novel (2013); and Matches: A Light Book (2015, 2nd enlarged ed. 2019), and co-editor of Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives (2017). She currently lives in Toronto.

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