Imaginary Order, a debut novel from first-year Fiction student Shifra Steinberg, is out now from Austin Macauley Publishers.
Imaginary Order is an intimate portrait of a mother, as viewed by a daughter. After a life-threatening accident, Nami’s mother is fighting to reclaim her life. The two set out on a journey, crossing Europe towards Amsterdam, and attempt to find themselves—and reconnect to each other—along the way.
“I am excited and relieved to—, after years of anticipation—, have my work out in the open, so I can entirely immerse myself in all my future projects,” Steinberg said.
An excerpt from the novel describes the moment when the mother becomes pregnant with Nami. Steinberg writes, “Then my being distorted her thin frame. She kept me a secret until I was no longer concealable. Her face flattened and became translucent, the whites of her eyes yellowed. Her body felt like a bloody liquid, suspended in a mushy sediment within a polyp. A rotting matter without life.”
In an interview with Tint Journal, Steinberg spoke about the significance of the novel’s title. “Before Imaginary Order it was titled The Mirror Stage,” she said. “Both derive from the same theory, namely, Jacques Lacan’s three stages of identity formation—the first being the formation of the ego in the mirror stage. Essentially, it’s the birth of our sense of personhood and individuality. It’s when we first understand the ‘I’ which makes us, us. Of course we have no memory of this pivotal period, it usually occurs around 12 months, but because the novel deals with the severing between mother and daughter, I liked the image it brought to mind.”
Imaginary Order is available for purchase here.
Shifra Steinberg'swork can be found in The Florentine and Expanded Fields. She also shares her work on Absurdus, her Substack, and is one of the most-followed Fiction writers on the platform.
