Past Events
Please join us for the launch and release party of, Christopher Lyke's book of short stories: The Chicago East India Company
November 11, 2022 6pm - 9 pm
There will be a reading and discussion between author Christopher Lyke and Erin Diamond, writer/spoken word artist at 7pm
DOUBLE DAGGER RELEASES THE CHICAGO EAST INDIA COMPANY
Debut fiction from Chicago veteran Christopher Lyke
Chicago, IL: Canadian publisher Double Dagger Books has released debut fiction by Chicago veteran and author Christopher Lyke.
The Chicago East India Company is a series of short stories and vignettes that mixes the existential struggles of its aging narrator with the truth that, eventually, imperial wars come home to roost. In
Lyke’s writing, we see how the logic of the war in Afghanistan is transferred to the classrooms of Chicago’s public high schools, causing America to be reborn in a shape that was never intended.
Lyke’s setting shifts in time and place but forever casts the main character of The Chicago East
India Company as someone trying to maintain his sanity, his humanity, and his kindness as the
state and its bureaucratic machinations unknowingly try to take them away.
Phil Halton (publisher, author of This Shall be a House of Peace and Blood Washing Blood:
Afghanistan’s Hundred-Year War) says “Lyke is part of a new generation of veterans who have
turned to writing to exorcise their demons and critique the flaws in American society that nearly
two decades of foreign wars have exposed. In the tradition of Camus, Orwell or Steinbeck, Lyke’s
work illuminates human nature and seeks the truth hidden under layers of grit.”
David Hoenigman (author of Burn Your Belongings, Squeal For Joy, and Man Sees Demon)
describes the work as, “A fearlessly personal, disquietingly honest, and subtly hilarious look at a
chewed up and spat out man.”
A launch party has been planned for November 11th of 2022 at Material (@materialexhibitions)
at 2025 W. Belmont, Chicago, IL. The book is available for purchase through Amazon and at select
bookstores in Chicago.
About Double Dagger Books: Double Dagger Books is a Canadian military- and security-focused
publisher of fiction and non-fiction. Based in Toronto and founded in 2022, Double Dagger seeks
to publish writing that transcends the idea of “War” as merely a genre and focuses instead on using
conflict to highlight essential elements of the human condition.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | 2 SEPT 2022
Phil Halton
Double Dagger Books
+1 (647) 463-2554
phil@doubledagger.ca