Black Bag

By Luke Kennard

"Tremendously deft . . . it had me laughing, unnerved, and hopeful as it galloped through a true and strange world." --Emily Nemens, bestselling author of The Cactus League

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime--sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag--to aid a professor's psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong?

In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr. Blend's students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own--in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag?--and the actor's childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . .

A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.

"A genre-defying, big-swing of a novel . . . a sharply funny meditation on masculinity, academia, the modern attention economy, and the quiet desperation of everyday life." --Andrew Boryga, author of Victim

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1638933383
• ISBN13: 9781638933380
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Zando
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"