The eleven stories in
Sweetlust
interweave feminist critique, intertextuality, and science fiction tropes in an irreverent portrait of our past, present, and future.
In a dystopian world with no men, women are “rehabilitated” at an erotic amusement park. Climate change has caused massive flooding and warming in the Balkans, where one programmer builds a time machine. And a devious reimagining of
The Sorrows of Young Werther
refocuses to center a sexually adventurous Charlotte.
Asja Bakić deploys the speculative and weird to playfully interrogate conversations around artificial intelligence, gender fluidity, and environmental degradation. As she did in her acclaimed debut
Mars
, Bakić once again upends her characters’ convictions and identities—and infuses each disorienting universe with sly humor and off-kilter eroticism. Visceral and otherworldly,
takes apart human desire and fragility, repeatedly framing pleasure as both inviting and perilous.