Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist ultimately does for WTO protests what Norman Mailers Armies of the Night did for the 1967 March on the Pentagon, gathering that confrontation in competing visions of what happened and what it meant.-Ron Charles, Washington Post A symphony of a novel. Yapa creates a fluid sense of the riot as it washes over the city.

What is so enthralling about this novel is its syncopated riff of empathy as the perspective jumps around these participants-some peaceful, some violent, some determined, some incredulous. An absolutely compelling read.-Bookpage A beautifully written book.-Entertainment Weekly A fantastic debut novel. In the style of Colum McCanns Let the Great World Spin, Yapa ties together seemingly disparate characters and narratives through a charged moment in history, showing how it still affects us all in different ways.-Booklist gripping, profoundly humane first novel. Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek gripping debut.Yapa is a skilled storyteller, revealing just enough about his characters and the direction of his plot to engage his readers, yet effectively building dramatic impact by withholding certain key details. Sunil Yapa has achieved something special, a story that is as tragic as it is relevant, as unflinching as it is humane. But above all, this book is a full-throated chorus of voices on all sides-protestors, cops, delegates, politicians, and ramblers-as democracy runs headlong into the machinery of global power. Underlying the novel, and at once reinforced and rejected, is the chiefs mantra: Care too much and the world will kill you cold.-New Yorker Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is visceral, horrifying, and often heroic. As these characters encounter one another in a fog of tear gas and pepper spray, Yapa vividly evokes rage and compassion. Review Quotes Fast-paced and unflinching. As heartbreaking as it is pulse-pounding, Yapas virtuosic debut asks profound questions about the power of empathy in our hyper-connected modern world, and the limits of compassion, all while exploring how far we must go for family, for justice, and for love. By the days end, they have all committed acts they never thought possible. With young, biracial Victor on one side of the barricades and his estranged father - the white chief of police - on the opposite, the day descends into chaos, capturing in its confusion the activists, police, bystanders, and citizens from all around the world whod arrived that day brimming with hope. He believes hes found both when he returns home to Seattle only to be swept up in a massive protest. Book Synopsis Grief-stricken after his mothers death and three years of wandering the world, Victor is longing for a family and a sense of purpose.

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