The Great Bagarozy

By Jesse Birnbaum

Cora Dulz is a psychiatrist who needs her head examined. She is sexually frustrated and has just lost two patients to suicide. What's more, she's infatuated with a new patient, Stanislaus Nagy, a disturbing young man who's fixated on Maria Callas. As this engagingly surreal short novel unfolds, the cagey Nagy claims to be the Devil, who apparently once inhabited Callas' poodle. Dulz's infatuation is propelled into obsession, and this can only lead to a bizarre denouement, in which, of course, there's hell to pay.

--By Jesse Birnbaum