A vivid, astonishing debut collection from a new international literary talent

Stories that are savagely funny, stories that haunt and sear and stun, stories so original they defy categorization above all, stories generously laden with sheer reading pleasure: I Am an Executioner is a brilliant and spellbinding collection Manil Suri In this debut collection, original, quirky and written with panache, Rajesh Parameswaran explores troubled lives - both human and animal - with compassion and humour. Readers will remember these unusual stories for a long time Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Palace of Illusions I am an Executioner gets the pulse racing from word one. I love Rajesh because his last name is even more impossible than my own, and because he has redefined the American short story for me. Bravo! Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story Wonderful stories - like small, deft carnivals entering our desert cities and cranky towns to, for a while, muster us into feeling, resolution, and happiness, before they go on their way. We can't help but be grateful for them Charlie Smith, author of Word Comix: Poems

Rajesh Parameswaran was born in Chennai, India and moved to the United States as an infant. His short stories have appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, Zoetrope: All-Story and Fiction. 'The Strange Career of Doctor Raju Gopalarajan' was one of three stories for which McSweeney's won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 2007, and it was included in Best American Magazine Writing and in The United States of McSweeney's: Ten Years of Accidental Classics. Rajesh Parameswaran lives in New York.