Zeke Borshellac is the story of the quest of a man who came from nothing to find meaning and fulfillment delivering succor to folks hit by hard times, though he often seems to be joined willy-nilly with forces producing much the opposite effect. Rocked by deceptions and disappointments, Zeke remains steadfast in his belief that there is something within him that has to come out, and that notion is the lodestar guiding him to his destiny as a grassroots folk hero uniting the downtrodden and oppressed.
Set in a cracked skew of time that smacks of the 19th century but exists unto itself, a lost dark world that can be suspenseful, dreamlike, and demented, Zeke Borshellac is a picaresque novel in the equally untimely grand tradition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Fielding’s Tom Jones and Melville’s Redburn—a side-splitting comic masterpiece, a stylistic tour de force, and a deeply felt exploration of the relationship of individual aspiration to political action.
Notices
“Overflowing with tall tales and slapstick humor, Zeke Borshellac traces a hapless adventurer’s coming-of-age…. an inspired novel about a goodhearted man’s zany adventures.”
—Willem Marx, in Foreword Reviews
“[Zeke Borshellac] The book is a lurid purple-prosed comic masterpiece. I have not had as much pleasure reading a deep dense novel like this since The Sot-Weed Factor, A Confederacy of Dunces, Tristam Shandy, Quixote, Auto-da-fé, Joy Williams…. The word play, the names and place names in this book, are absolutely hilarious, stunning, straight out of Jonathan Swift…. Listen up folks: literary fiction is not dead.”
—David Brizer, in Compulsive Reader
James Damis was born in Hoboken and lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter. His stories have appeared in a number of small publications. He is the author of the novellas Dupes and Liars and the Lost Shore Town (BlazeVOX, 2022) and Filial Sojourn (Running Wild Press, 2025).