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The Knife Dance
Originally written in the ‘90s and long thought lost, 'The Knife Dance' is being published here for the first time. It is available in two limited editions, Deluxe Hardcover (100 copies) and Trade Paperback (200 copies).
“In The Knife Dance, we return to San Veneficio, city-setting of Michael Cisco’s award-winning first novel, The Divinity Student. An assortment of theological factions has gathered to decide the question of the exact nature of Jesus Christ, which promises profound consequences for the religion that bears His name. There is no dry debate here, however, as the various factions engage in shoot-outs and spycraft worthy of a gangland war. At the center of this brilliant fiction is the Knife Dance, a fabled saint’s greatest accomplishment, a deadly choreography that allowed him to overcome the Satan, but whose exact steps have been lost. Full of scenes of headlong action and ecstatic experience, The Knife Dance suggests that the edge of the blade on which we so often find ourselves may be our preferred location. It is another example of the considerable range of Michael Cisco’s talent.”
— John Langan, author of "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies"
“In The Knife Dance, we return to San Veneficio, city-setting of Michael Cisco’s award-winning first novel, The Divinity Student. An assortment of theological factions has gathered to decide the question of the exact nature of Jesus Christ, which promises profound consequences for the religion that bears His name. There is no dry debate here, however, as the various factions engage in shoot-outs and spycraft worthy of a gangland war. At the center of this brilliant fiction is the Knife Dance, a fabled saint’s greatest accomplishment, a deadly choreography that allowed him to overcome the Satan, but whose exact steps have been lost. Full of scenes of headlong action and ecstatic experience, The Knife Dance suggests that the edge of the blade on which we so often find ourselves may be our preferred location. It is another example of the considerable range of Michael Cisco’s talent.”
— John Langan, author of "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies"
120 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 2016
4 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Michael Cisco
91 books483 followersMichael Cisco is an American weird fiction writer, Deleuzian academic and a teacher, currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999.
He is interested in confusion.
He is interested in confusion.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 31, 2017
This book is copy 77 of 100 signed and numbered copies, signed by Michael Cisco and Harry O. Morris.
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May 3, 2016I don't like to review things I publish, so I'll just say this. 'The Knife Dance' is not horror, it is a phantasmagoric fantasy that moved me to tears. Beautiful, chaotic, and deeply Weird. We as readers owe Joe Pulver a sizable debt for rescuing this amazing story and shepherding it to life.
July 19, 2018
Man, Cisco can write! Another good work, a novella this one is. Bizarre and surreal, with warring religious factions and more, and set in the same city, San Veneficio, as the incredible Divinity Student. Much gratitude to Joseph Pulver for keeping his copy all the years since he and Michael Cisco and others convened for readings and more, much thanks to Dim Shores for printing it (by the by, mine is 23 of 200 of the paperback edition) and most importantly, much thanks to Cisco for writing such good, Weird stuff, and for agreeing to allow this to come out after previously destroying the copies he had (see, that's why Pulver keeping his copy is so important to the story!).
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January 20, 2021This is a beautiful book with pages almost stiffer than its cover. Entrancing artwork by Harry O. Morris, arch grey partitions, introduction by Paul Tremblay, and with Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.’s afterworded circumstances of its rediscovery as a text now published for the first time after having been kept in Joe’s own cupboard for many eons.
But the work represents, it seems, an appendix to or an original throwaway from or, more likely, a now realised lost highlight from the author’s much earlier success, ‘The Divinity Student’, in the early 1990s, something I have not yet read.
But the work represents, it seems, an appendix to or an original throwaway from or, more likely, a now realised lost highlight from the author’s much earlier success, ‘The Divinity Student’, in the early 1990s, something I have not yet read.
March 11, 2017
First taste of Cisco's work. Not to be missed! Very, very surreal! Might not be for everyone.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews