In Java, a master of the shadow-puppet theater seeks to possess-by his art-a woman, who perishes as though by the contagion of his unnatural desire. Shadowplay is a meditation on story-telling as an act of seizure, a parable of obsession and of the danger of confounding the real with its representations. *** "Stories compensate for lives unlived. They are what Norman Lock, or his avatar Guntur, calls shadows, negative reflections on a backlit screen, comprising, through artistry and brief illumination, ghosts. Lock's teller is imprisoned by darkness, captivated by warriors and princesses no longer, if ever, living. Death becomes a distance from which the voices of these unliving return. It is a journey as delicious as it is threatening." -R.M. Berry *** "Wise up and get all you can of Lock. His writing was written by a writer exquisite in the singularity (read for this "genius") of his utterance." -Gordon Lish *** "[Lock's] prose is melodial, and alert to every signal from the unseen." -Gary Lutz