The Empty City - Berit Ellingsen

The Empty City is a story about awakening to inner truths and one's own self. It is told in short episodes that describe a place, a dream, a question, a memory, a fantasy or an event.

Urban explorer and lucid dreamer Brandon Minamoto discovers that outside his thoughts and emotions exists a world that is silent and open, surrounding him and everyone else. The silence starts picking him apart and makes him question his sense of self and his past. But behind the noise and the stories, there is something constant and unchanging.

An excerpt is online on the book webpage, together with links to interviews: Empty City.

More information about the research for this book is up in Necessary Fiction's Research Notes.

Berit Ellingsen is a Korean-Norwegian fiction writer whose stories have or will appear in Everyday Genius, SmokeLong Quarterly, Blue Fifth Review, Metazen, decomP and other literary journals. Berit was a semi-finalist in the Rose Metal Press Chapbook Competition in 2011 and her chapbook What Girls Really Think was published by Turtleneck Press in February 2012. Berit’s novel, The Empty City, is a story about silence.

Berit Ellingsen: The Empty City

PS: there's also a personal review of the book in the editor's blog: Zen and the Empty City


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related links: philosophical, novels