“Fargo Burns, the madly baffled, restless and beguiling subject of Kos Kostmayer’s compelling novel, bounces like a pinball between excess and sobriety—as do we, his unsettled readers. Kostmayer’s visceral account of one man’s quest for quiet normality is dark, tense, playful and deeply affecting.”
—Jim Crace, author of Being Dead
"Howling and half-naked in his torn and bloody clothing Fargo is a desperate man and dangerous to himself and others. He ricochets around his kitchen, heaving furniture into the street. The street is twelve stories down and Fargo fills the New York air with chairs and tables, lamps and dishes, cutting boards and cabinets, electric fans and plastic caddies, frying pans and double boilers, brooms and mops and metal buckets, canned goods and Pyrex platters, a garbage can, a cookie jar, a toaster oven, even the refrigerator door, which he rips off and throws out the window......"
Kos Kostmayer’s novel Fargo Burns—the first of his four novels coming out from Dr. Cicero Books—takes its title from the main character, a 32-year-old, Mississippi-born New Yorker who makes two serious mistakes and spends the rest of his life trying to undo the damage. Mistake #1: Fargo goes mad, violently so, and turns into a dog. He finds himself in a mental hospital under the care of a psychiatrist (whom he believes to be Virginia Woolf). Released from the hospital, Fargo makes mistake #2: he begins an affair with a professional killer’s girlfriend.

Kos Kostmayer is a novelist, poet, playwright, and screenwriter. He has four novels coming out in the next two years from Dr. Cicero Books. In 2020 Dr. Cicero Books will publish FARGO BURNS and THE POLITICS OF NOWHERE. In 2021 Dr. Cicero will publish LOST RELIGION and THE AVENUE OF SAD DAYS.
