Riots I Have Known

Longlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Ryan Chapman’s “gritty bracing debut” (Esquire) set during a prison riot is “dark daring and laugh-out-loud hilarious…one of the smartest—and best—novels of the year” (NPR).A largescale riot rages through Westbrook prison in upstate New York incited by a poem in the house literary journal. Our unnamed narrator barricaded inside the computer lab swears he’s blameless—even though as editor-in-chief he published the piece in question. As he awaits violent interruption by his many many enemies he liveblogs one final Editor’s Letter. Riots I Have Known is his memoir confession and act of literary revenge. His tale spans a childhood in Sri Lanka navigating the postwar black markets and hotel chains; employment as a Park Avenue doorman serving the widows of the one percent; life in prison with the silver lining of his beloved McNairy; and his stewardship of The Holding Pen a “masterpiece of post-penal literature” favored by Brooklynites everywhere. All will be revealed and everyone will see he’s really a good guy doing it for the right reasons. “Fitfully funny and murderously wry” Riots I Have Known is “a frenzied yet wistful monologue from a lover of literature under siege” (Kirkus Reviews).