Authored by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde, Hermitage of Dreamers investigates the structural complexity of the lyric essay, the four disparate narratives fractured into threaded instalments that invoke poetry, fiction, history, and memoir. A work that revels in hybridity, Hermitage of Dreamers takes a leaf from practitioners of the form, including Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, Michael Ondaatje, and David Foster Wallace, while dipping into the speculative genre. With its 2018 publication, this collection commemorates the 100th anniversary of Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 White on White, the abstract painting created by the founder of Suprematism. Thaddeus Rutkowski calls the book “touching, provocative, and beautiful”. In her praise for the book, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, writes: “Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde invites us to imagine that angels walk among us. His angels do not embody the fleet terror of revelation, but the majestic brokenness of our first selves, now reified through centuries of contemplating art, history, and philosophy. Where Rilke’s angels stoked our passions, Desmond’s angels offer us a lassitude of intellection. In a universe literally bookended by suicide and genocide, Hermitage of Dreamers masterfully demonstrates how the space between art and divinity collapses in our search for solace.”