Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots

Damien Wood's path to adulthood is marked with effortless success--creative, financial, sexual. Yet the cultural clashes of his half-Asian lineage is coupled with the inability to be touched by the people around him. Damien's efforts to find himself take him from one hollow relationship to another, but he remains a robot, convincingly playing the role of artist and globetrotter. Then, the century turns. Damien's mother dies after a long and agonizing illness, and his emotions, from desire to despair, begin to emerge. These birth pangs of humanity send Damien on a mordantly comic, darkly suspenseful quest from the Americas through Southeast Asia in the company of an expatriate colony with too little to lose - until violence comes to claim him. No longer a robot, Damien has become a wanted man. A daring hybrid of adventure, verse, and travel fiction, framed by a chronicle of self-revelation in a pitch-perfect voice for the post-millennium, this book heralds the return of a novelist of impressive literary gifts.

Kent Evans is the author of Malas Ondas, a novel about self-destruction throughout Latin America. He was a fixture on the spoken word art scene throughout the 90's. His work has appeared in numerous national pop-culture and literary zines and publications. Kent's current artistic endeavors include performing poetry with music in a live trip/hop jazz format.