Two Tales: Jamali Kamali and ZundelState
Two Tales: Jamali Kamali and ZundelState
By Karen Chase
These two stories explore love and beauty in the context of fear and threats. Jamali Kamali is a book-length poem about two men who lived in 16th century India. Little about them is known but they are buried together in a small tomb in Delhi. For hundreds of years, the story that these men were lovers has been passed down through the generations. Jamali Kamali is a fictional account of their love, longing, separation, and death. ZundelState, a novella in verse, takes place a thousand years in the future in a repressive land where history is banned, and dreaming has vanished. Joe, a lover of history, is rebellious and secretive. Marianna is a model worker for the State where she works in the HistoryShit Apparatchik Division. They fall in love against all odds. These two tales of outsiders, one from the distant past and the other from the far-off future, echo and reflect upon each other in surprising ways.
Details
Details
Guernica World Editions (Guernica World Editions)
978-1-77183-941-9
194 pages |
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Reviews
Reviews
What is history? And who does it belong to? Is it fact? Or just the favored narrative of the time, that has become accepted as the truth? Fact and fiction meet in Karen Chase’s “Two Tales: Jamali Kamali and ZundelState,” one a modern love story inspired by the past; the other a futuristic tale that yearns to understand our present.
The Berkshire Eagle
These pages are Technicolor verse. They are visceral. These narratives, alone and together, affect the reader’s body like landscape and you are fully sunk into that landscape when reading. They are stand-alone. They are intertwined. At the core of these stories is the endless possibility of love, language, and the power of the human heart. Karen Chase is a troubadour of wind, sound, space, time, memory, and desire.
Matthew Lippman, author of We Are All Sleeping With Our Sneakers On
Chase’s message is clear and chilling: the fragility and preciousness of freedom, the finiteness of life, the importance of love and taking responsibility—a warning, especially in the ever-threatening times we are living in.
The Berkshire Edge
While Jamali Kamali is set in an imagined 16th century India and the ZundelState in a sci-fi landscape, Karen Chase finds the immutable human nature of her characters in these disparate worlds. And she has faith in their humanity, and that a good human story will always feel fresh and meaningful.
Berkshire Jewish Voice
The two stories are riveting…. They drive home how our beloved humanity rests not in our capacity to reason, but in our wild, imaginative spiritedness that lives in our dreams and loves. Should these fall away, we are finished.
The Lakeville Journal
Both tales explore love not as mere romance, but as a radical force – a means of survival, connection and rebellion in worlds that would erase or suppress such bonds. The characters are outsiders, separated by centuries, yet linked by their yearning to carve out spaces of intimacy and meaning in hostile environments.
Lavender Orchids Book Blog
A highly recommended read for those who savor poetic beauty, historical intrigue, and thought-provoking speculative fiction, Two Tales: Jamali Kamali and ZundelState is a literary gem that elegantly captures the infinite complexities of love and identity across time.
The Reading Bud Book Blog
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Awards
Awards
About the author
Karen Chase is the author of four volumes of poetry, and four books of non-fiction. Her book of essays, History Is Embarrassing, came out in 2024. Chase and her husband, the painter Paul Graubard, live in the hills of Western Massachusetts.