Skin

In a deeply personal introduction to this reprint of Koja’s classic, transgressive 1993 novel, Eric LaRocca shares how encountering the book decades ago gave him the courage to share with the world his stories about illicit events and depraved characters. Readers meet sculptor Tess and dancer Bibi, who come together to create a new form of art that combines their muses—metal and the body—which quickly becomes a destructive obsession. Written in a punchy, slightly askew style that initially puts readers off kilter but quickly becomes a cadence that engulfs them, Koja’s vivid tale of tortured human souls reads like a piece of performance art itself, an experience that is both highly unsettling and extremely satisfying. The novel demands that readers sit back and experience it first—and deal with how it makes them feel later.