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The Strange Recital

The Strange Recital is an audio anthology of short fiction. It is not genre-specific and delights in perceptions of reality that warp and fold in unexpected ways. The literary works we showcase might be odd, humorous, or surreal.... They might remind you of Borges, Nabokov, Kafka, Pynchon. Or none of the above.
 
Each podcast episode features one writer and runs about 25 minutes. It includes a story reading – the Recital – a brief musical interlude, and an author interview with a twist – the Post Recital. Subscribe to get a new episode twice a month. It's free.

Dec 27, 2020

"As you drive northeast through Dutchess County in upstate New York, farm scenes strike calendar poses: leaning barns, well-tended white Victorians, winding roads tunneling through overhanging maples."

A pastoral paradise... but is there something dark under the surface? Troubles in America manifest in the personal. Let...


Dec 13, 2020

"I hope you've not taken cold with the doors open, Doctor. The wind was blowing harsh on the heath. I'd forgotten how mortally cold wind can make you."

 
A riveting dialogue between the dying Sigmund Freud and a blind prophet from ancient Greece, a key player in the drama of Oedipus. What happened, and what does it...


Nov 22, 2020

"It was Christmas ’37 when the ship docked at Piraeus and disgorged me and my trunk onto the quay of the commercial harbor.... I was now just like the immigrants you’d sometimes see on Ellis Island, back in my own country."

 
An injured detective flees New York to land in Athens at the dawn of war. He'll face...


Nov 8, 2020

"In some old magazine or newspaper, I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time from his wife."

 
An odd little character piece about the inexplicability of human behavior... was this long-dead author ahead of his time?


Oct 26, 2020

"By the time the next tsunami hit, at dawn, Father Flanagan's main concern was for the nuns.  Their children's mission, on another island miles away, was at risk."

 
A moral dilemma on which hangs the fate of humanity... what would you do?