Melting Point fuses prose and poetry, realism and literary inventiveness, in dealing with the absurdity of humanity. Its fourteen stories embrace a dizzying variety of genres: hyperrealism, sci-fi, the Gothic and melodrama, all subtly re-invented.

The most striking thing about Magarian’s collection is its range of interests, the multiplicity of the worlds evoked, and the extreme contrasts among its characters: a feted, reclusive writer; a seductive murderess with a fondness for Bourbon; a thief obsessed with a Toulouse-Lautrec print; a fruit and vegetable merchant who has a genius toddler; and a deep-sea diver who can only be free from clumsiness when she is submerged in water.

Stories and characters flow from these molten moments in a series of fictions that touch on ecstasy and excess.

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Magarian has one of the best voices in contemporary fiction.

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Magarian’s authentic poetic voice is strangely addictive, articulated with a shamelessly exotic accent.

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Mr. Magarian writes with a cultured wit and seems quite capable of making just about anything funny.

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The clue, as they say, lies in the title, for the stories in Melting Point are indeed much preoccupied with processes of disintegration. Philosophical, spiritual, formal, imaginative, ethical – the molecules positively fly apart, page after page.

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Magarian has a unique voice that makes ‘Melting Point’ so utterly readable. Expected the unexpected

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Melting Point braids twisted Kafkaesque parables with haunting tales that, like Hesse’s Magic Theater, map the road to vision.

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Melting Point is that rarest of things; a collection that will return to the reader as often as the reader returns to it.

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Overall, this is an ambitious collection which is at once clever and heartfelt. Melting Point’s stories take the reader on a journey through the extremities of human experience, taking in suffering, hedonism, genius, ignorance, inexplicable horror, and nirvanic insight. And it’s a wild and exhilarating ride.