Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds

Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

For fans of George Saunders and Haruki Murakami, Christian Moody delivers his debut speculative short story collection, Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds––tales of the strange beauty and shadowy fears that lurk beneath the surface of our everyday lives

Best friends George and Elly start a hide-and-go-seek club inspired by their love of the game, which goes too far when Elly stays hidden for years. An orphan discovers that the trees on the outskirts of town have eyes that watch and record the town’s inhabitants, threatening to expose their most vulnerable secrets. In a world with hardly any birds left, a struggling family lives alone in the woods, where the father begins to create mechanical birds which threaten the only life left. And a man working at a futuristic egg factory spots an anomaly in one of the eggs, which, along with the fact that his wife and daughter spontaneously get pregnant at the same time, sparks his journey to uncover the company’s secrets.

Winner of the 2023 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, Moody’s collection delights in the absurd and dystopian, weaving in themes of climate change, surveillance, privacy, and technology that coalesce into a profound statement about the mysteries of the human experience.