Instant Karma. Novel published by City Lights, San Francisco, Oct. 2002

“Adept at deadpan humor and fluent in high-tone irony, Swartz guides his misanthropic diarist and pseudo-Talmudic scholar to the works of a mishmash of tantalizing thinkers.”

 

“A first novel of remarkable compression, lithe satirical humor, impressive intellectual dimension, and sly provocation.”

 

“Mark Swartz has written a remarkable book. Instant Karma is a quick, bright thing that is sort of hilarious, always amusing, somewhat edgy, thoroughly wry, and genuinely touching.”

—Frederick Barthelme (Painted Desert)

 

“Instant Karma is irresistible from beginning to end. To make this original treatment of a complex and indeed zany subject so consistently entertaining is proof of a new and prodigious talent.”

—Harry Mathews (Cigarettes; The Oulipo Compendium)

H2O. Novel published by Soft Skull, Brooklyn, Oct. 2006

"Swartz's shrewd, jittery, and noirishly atmospheric speculative tale about a bumbling antihero and dire environmental trauma brings an irreverent and parrying voice to ecofiction and casts a fractured light on follies petty and catastrophic.”

 

"A deft vision of America's postindustrial future in the stylized guise of noir fiction.... At once fantastic and eerily plausible.... [Shivers's] insights and unique vision not only are clever and entertaining but offer thought-provoking commentary on America's current social and cultural malaise."

 

"Mark Swartz’s second novel, the noirish eco-satire H2O, makes Davis Guggenheim’s film An Inconvenient Truth look like a feel-good summer romance… [H2O is] a fast, fun, ominous read.”

—Time Out New York

 

“A short, sharp shock--a jab to the eyeball and brain, H2O by Mark Swartz is as telling commentary on our society now as Don DeLillo’s White Noise was in its time. Savagely precise, clever but not shallow, Swartz's writing lacerates even as it's deeply, disturbingly funny.”

—Jeff VanderMeer