Man Hating Psycho

Author: Iphgenia Baal

Publisher: Hagfish (2025)

In Man Hating Psycho, Iphgenia Baal captures the humor, absurdism, and surreality of online encounters, demonstrating how the indifferent depravity that rules the internet infiltrates our everyday, face-to-face interactions. In these stories, set among the political uncertainty of late-aughts London, young people stage rooftop confessions, DIY group shows, and bowling-alley brawls, and fumble toward a muddled sense of racial and class identity and sexual politics in a world growing increasingly unfamiliar.

In “Pain in the Neck,” a woman’s misguided act of generosity toward an old friend leads to one of the worst nights of her life. A group of teenagers in “Pro Life” disintegrates over a shocking secret that proves their inability to see one another clearly. And in “Crazy Menu,” a dissolute stag party at a Ukrainian strip club unravels into a hilarious spectacle of excess. Provocative, irreverent, and startlingly original, this collection cements Baal as one of the most resolute and daring voices in contemporary literature.