The Killing of Arturo Venturi & Other Stories

Bette A.

An ebook exclusive.

The Killing of Arturo Venturi & Other Stories presents for the first time novelist and artist Bette A.'s short stories, most of which have never been published. In the collection, Bette explores alternate dimensions, dreams, nightmares, possible futures and speculative utopias, among them a world where everyone is linked by an emotional connection system; an endless house inhabited by a girl who dreams a new room into existence each night; and a society that is controlled by a polling machine connected to the brains of the citizens. With her signature wit, Bette irreverently crashes genre boundaries with stories that fold in on themselves at unexpected angles, like feathers pointing the wrong directions.

A longtime collaborator with Brian Eno, their joint book What Art Does is available from Faber. Bette is the author of two novels, Rus, Like Everyone Else, and What's Mine, both published in North America by Unnamed Press, and by Cossee in the Netherlands.

Praise for Bette A.’s Previous Work

"Bette A. is becoming a major literary novelist in the best European tradition. She has the down-and-out life experiences of the early Orwell, the desperate humor of Flann O’Brien, the prose immediacy of Beckett, and the avalanche of bureaucracy of Kafka. What’s Mine is a stellar achievement of depicting the absurdist brutality of contemporary urban capitalism where nothing but narcissism and arbitrary outcomes rule."

—Alan N Shapiro

"Bette A. is my favourite Dutch writer. No one writes like she does. Her voice— frank, whimsical, philosophical, funny, gorgeously tactless— points a lens at the world that sharpens everything, then she plays with the focus, then resharpens it so the world never looks quite the same. What's Mine is a timeless book that deserves a wide readership."

—Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid & the Wasp, winner of the Collyer Bristow Prize, Dalker Literary Award, the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award 2021 and the O. Henry award

"What’s Mine is a surprising and deep work with a persistent quiet momentum carrying the reader back-and-forth in time and space across the slivers of four interlocking lives. It is totally engaging."

—Brian Eno

"Bette’s inimitable voice is always a treat to escape into. I cannot wait for this dark, absurdist tale to go out into the world. "

—Jing-Jing Lee, author of How We Disappeared, selected for the British Royal Big Jubilee Read

"The shifting perspectives give this surprising, absurdist novel a cinematic character, but what stays with you is the way small events find their place in the larger story."

—Tzum

"With subtlety and humor WHAT'S MINE addresses how confusing justice and property can be…"

—Argos