Take a journey through time in this genre-bending story collection and witness the lives of twelve fictional characters working some of history’s strangest professions that no longer exist.

Heppiri Otoko, a man born with the embarrassing ability to manipulate the sounds of his bodily gas into music, answers the call to help one of history’s greatest composers find his love of music when he is stricken deaf. Francisco Silva must make a choice between two lives. As the world’s last archmime, history’s most perplexing jesters, it’s his duty to perform an impression of the recently deceased at the front of a funeral procession for someone uncomfortably close to him. Can he honour the family while remaining true to the wishes of the dead? Wendy Chapman is the world’s first female Wha-Wants-Me Man. If wandering the ancient streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town offering to rent her portable toilet to anyone in need wasn’t distasteful enough, the constant pressure of her rivals in this male-dominated space and the awkward romantic advances from her customers might be enough to make her quit altogether.

These and nine other stories use some of history’s most unbelievable occupations as jumping off points to explore deeper themes that reveal parallels between the people who worked the jobs of yesterday and the challenges we face today.

Afterword blends literary fiction, magical realism, horror, absurdism, fables, science fiction, and more into a single riveting package. If you like award-winning fiction grounded in history, you’ll love this inventive debut by Jeremy Bibaud.