Zugzwang: Microfiction for the Post-Internet Age

By Gabriel Stibio. Designed by Dan Go.

• Approx. 200 pages
• 112x181mm
• Section-sewn, soft cover, uncoated stock, colour
• Limited first edition. Printing in July 2024.

What is Zugzwang?

Zugzwang is growing up with unrestricted internet access.
Zugzwang is irony poisoning.
Zugzwang is brain damage from being exposed to unfiltered opinions spewed on message boards.
Zugzwang is regurgitated pseudointellectual discourse attempting to convert those on the other side to your side but only further entrenching them in theirs.
Zugzwang is the realisation that you will never escape Samsara.
It is hope, it is longing, yearning, pining for a better world whilst becoming increasingly disillusioned by the harsh reality of coming face to face with an uncaring, indifferent universe that does not recognise your existence as anything more than the sound of a solitary tree falling in a forest when no one is around to hear it, and ultimately it is searching, finding and celebrating beauty in the absurdity of it all.

Zugzwang is life.