A novel by Pamela Ditchoff

September 1, 1995 • 6 x 9 • 223 pages • 978-1-56689-035-9

Eminently human and ultimately joyful, The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies is a compelling novel full of humor, pathos, revulsion, and love. Mixing fact and imagination, this fictional oral history about “human oddities” includes figures such as Aesop, Catherine the Great, Tom Thumb, and Jo-Jo The Russian Dog-Faced Boy in a provocative story that extends from Ancient Egypt to 18th Century England to 20th Century America.

About the Author

Pamela Ditchoff received a Chicago Review Fiction Award for the story which formed the basis for The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies (Coffee House Press, 1995). She is the author of three other novels, including Mrs. Beast and Princess Beast. Ditchoff holds a Master’s Degree in English and Creative Writing from Michigan State University. She currently lives in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Reviews

“The people in this book may not look like most of us, but they are exactly like us on the inside, with the same hearts, the same fears and longings.” —Larry Brown

“Pamela Ditchoff has stirred up a storm here—an excess of larger-than-life histories—an overflow, a deluge, the whole ancient Flood of scenes. . . . Ditchoff writes with no lull in the worded whirlwind that picks up relics, gargoyles, grotesques, omens, and demons, and pitches them down around us, right here.” —Janet Kauffman