Friday, December 11, 2009

Daughters and Well-meaning Mothers

This past summer, Daryl Sharp of Inner City Books contacted us, explaining that he had edited a manuscript for Kehinde Ayeni. Daryl suggested that the manuscript was a real winner and encouraged us to consider it for publication. We had a closer look and soon contracted to published this body of work. We are now pleased to announce the publication of:

Feasts of Phantoms
a novel by Kehinde Adeola Ayeni
ISBN 978-0-9813939-2-6, 346 pp

How is a well meaning mother to protect her daughter from a culture where the birth of a baby girl is met with despair because the only future open to her is that of sexual assault and teenage pregnancy, which would doom her to a life of illiteracy and poverty as it has doomed her lineage before her? Genital mutilation has many causes but at the root of all of them is fear. A fear that pushes a mother to do the unthinkable to a daughter that she loves? What does a scapegoat do with the fate she has been handed? Accept it and roll with it, or reject it? How is she to reject it when the acceptance of her role is needed for her culture's psychic equilibrium? In the theater of the mind where all springs forth, is there such a thing as an innocent victim, and a victimizer? Feasts of Phantoms is a novel that explores these questions, and more.

Kehinde Adeola Ayeni, MD., a public health physician, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst was born in Nigeria. A mother of two children, she is in private practice in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Her first novel Our Mother's Sore Expectations explored the plight of women under dictatorship government in Nigeria. Dr. Ayeni founded the Foundation for Indigenous Development and Advocacy (Foundida.org), a nonprofit organization whose goal is that every Nigerian child has at minimum an elementary school education, and she works closely with Educare Trust Fund based in Ibadan, Nigeria (Educaretrust1994.org).

Feasts of Phantoms can be purchased directly from the Fisher King Press Online Bookstore.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Press Release - Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

a novella by Erel Shalit
ISBN 9781926715032
Just published by Fisher King Press:

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return
a novella by Erel Shalit

Requiem returns us to an eternal theme, a dialogue with Soul, and we know quite well what happens when one dialogues with Soul—we change, consciousness is enlarged, the impossible becomes possible and we no longer are compelled to blindly follow in the deathly path of our forefathers.

Requiem is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation. While set in Israel sometime in the present, it is a story that reaches into the timelessness of history, weaving discussions with Heine and Kafka into a tale of universal implications.

Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra’anana, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. He is the author of several publications, including Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path.

Dr. Shalit lectures at professional institutes, universities, and cultural forums in Israel, Europe, and the United States. One of his popular lectures includes Requiem and is the basis for Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return.