Join Bart’s Books for an evening with Zito Madu on Friday, June 21st from 6-7!

An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn into the labyrinth of memory and the monsters lurking there.

As a pandemic rages across the globe, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Zito Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family’s difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret. But as it is with all labyrinths, after finding its center, will he come away unscathed, or will he transform into the gripping, fantastical monstrousness that’s out to consume him whole?

"Difficult to categorize but hauntingly effective… It will reward whoever picks it up." —David Keymer, Library Journal (STARRED REVIEW)

Zito Madu was born in Nigeria and moved to the United States in 1998. He grew up in Detroit and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His writing has been published in many publications, including Plough Quarterly, Victory Journal, GQ Magazine, the New Republic, and the Nation. The Minotaur at Calle Lanza is Zito Madu’s debut book.