Garth Greenwell's book entitled Cleanness was purposefully marketed as neither a short story collection nor a novel, though it contains a total of nine distinct literary works and focuses on a single protagonist. The events in the narrative are presented from the perspective of the unnamed narrator, an American writer in his thirties. As Greenwell presents key moments from the unnamed narrator's period of teaching high school literature classes in Bulgaria, he uses the narrative to underscore themes such as hope, desire, and the importance of communication.
