The Sofa

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What to expect

Kafkaesque slow-burn domestic horror from a master of the uncanny.

Mr. Montessori and his family return home from a trip to the beach to discover that their sofa is different. Once dark and contemporary, it’s now antique, green and yellow, and smelling faintly of damp.

Its appearance and origins are a mystery. A joke? An inverted theft? A break in the fabric of reality? Yes, the police take the “crime” seriously. But what happens next lies outside their expertise. Strange sounds in the night. A half-bathroom toilet with a mind of its own. Odd, fleeting glimpses of something, or someone, in mirrors. The inexplicable vision of Montessori’s neighbor: He swears he saw a burglar.

Montessori’s quest for answers will take him to a dank highway overpass in decayed upstate New York, a very strange dry-cleaning supply concern in outermost Queens, and into the depths of an eerie, warped forest where time and space no longer connect, all while putting his ever-more-troubled marriage and young family in grave danger. But that’s what it costs to find out if we own our possessions—or if they own us.

Munson emerges as a master stylist in this tense, taut work of surreal humor and psychological horror.

Critics Review

“A weird hug of a novel. A nightmare, warm and cozy.”

Adam Levin, author of Mount Chicago

The Sofa is everything you want from literary horror. Perfect dementia-core.”

Gabriel Smith, author of Brat

“A fantastic, funny, and smart work, a story driven forward by Sam Munson’s gift for building narrative reality in an increasingly unreal world.”

Donald Antrim, author of The Emerald Light in the Air

“A masterpiece. The Sofa moves with the inevitability and elegance of a recurring nightmare. When you look closely at the clear prose, you notice alien scales beneath.”

Michael Clune, author of Pan

The Sofa…is unsettling, funny, and sickening by turns—and it made me really appreciate my old familiar couch, which I truly hope no-one steals out of my apartment anytime soon.”

Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person and Other Stories

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