Robert Olen Butler gives us a sequence of stories narrated in the final moments after decapitation — historical figures, fictional characters, mythic beings, nobodies, monsters, the lot.

The formal trick is brutal and precise: each piece is exactly 240 words, built around the old claim that consciousness lingers briefly after the head is cut off. Critics and catalog copy consistently describe the book in those terms, and that severe premise is exactly what gives it its peculiar charge. 

Butler turns a macabre constraint into something witty, grotesque, sad, and occasionally unexpectedly tender. It sits somewhere between flash fiction, black comedy, thought experiment, and cabinet of curiosities — the kind of book that earns its place through sheer nerve.

Chronicle Books hardcover edition, 2006. Dust jacket present. Great condition. First edition.