Anthologies featuring bestselling authors alongside rising stars. Short story collections from some of our beloved authors with Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver and Anita Desai among the better known
Anthologies & Short Stories
Tachyon Publications Cultural Breaks
Book Synopsis
£22.79
Tachyon Publications The Fate Of Mice
Book Synopsis
£13.77
Tachyon Publications Portable Childhoods
Book Synopsis
£13.77
Tachyon Publications The Wall Of America
Book Synopsis
£13.77
Tachyon Publications The Best of Joe R. Lansdale
Book Synopsis
£14.24
Parthian Books A White Afternoon: Parthian Anthology of Welsh
Book SynopsisA first English translation of 30 Welsh short stories featuring work by many of the leading young writers working in the Welsh language. Contributors include Aled Islwyn, Aled Lewis Evans, John Emyr, Meleri Roberts, Meg Elis, Angharad Price, Manon Rhys and Sioned Puw Rowlands.
£13.29
Parthian Books The Origami Bird
Book SynopsisFeaturing 14 short stories, this collection examines the positive and degenerative influence of the creative spirit on both people's behavior and their relationships with others.
£12.69
Comma Press Long Days
Book Synopsis‘Recently something funny happened. There was no summer, no autumn either.’ With this opener Maike Wetzel begins exploring that moment in life when the breakneck experience of growing up suddenly changes gear and slows down. A young woman sees a dead body for the first time; a sister watches her anorexic sibling transform into different person; a girl pieces together the facts of a custody battle she’s not been let in on. Wetzel’s stories catch people when some part of their lives has been put on pause, leaving them so adrift only acts of obsession or self-destruction provide direction. Wetzel’s stories have great depth of focus. In the background, an over-eager teacher might be explaining the facts of life in unnecessary, lurid detail, but in the foreground students will be taking drastic measures, in secret; a gymnastics class may be limbering up for an impressive display, but in close-up, dietcrazed girls faint in alarming numbers. With pared down but insistent language, Wetzel achieves a poise and clarity and presents lives that are as arresting as they are arrested.
£999.99
COMMA PRESS Decapolis Tales from Ten Cities
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£16.17
Comma Press You Have 24 Hours to Love Us
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Comma Press It Was Just Yesterday
Book SynopsisThe characters in Mirja Unge’s debut collection are all, in their own way, evading something; whether failing to confront the true nature of an encounter, or avoiding responsibilities as a parent, sibling or friend. Abuse, betrayal and neglect lurk beneath a veneer of mutually maintained ‘normality’, waiting for an opportunity to resurface.Trade Review"A breathtaking and intensive read, full of warmth, humor, and darkness." --Hallandsposten newspaper "Both atmospheric and menacing." --Manchester Review "Mirja Unge has once again convinced me that she is one of the most important writers in Sweden today." --Nerikes Allehanda newspaper "Unge can do a lot with a little." --Guardian
£14.50
Comma Press Swallow Summer
Book SynopsisTwo music producers pack up their studio – along with their dreams of ever making it in the industry – after too many bands fail to pay their bills… A woman takes up an invitation to visit an ex-lover in Arizona, only to find his apartment is no bigger than a motel room… A former drama student runs into an old classmate from ten years before, hardly recognising the timid creature he’s become… Each character in Larissa Boehning’s debut collection experiences a moment where they’re forced to confront how differently things turned out, how quickly ambitions were shelved, or how easily people change. Former colleagues meet up to reminisce about the failed agency they used to work for; brothers-in-law find themselves co-habiting long after the one person they had in common passed away; fellow performers watch as their careers slowly drift in opposite directions. Boehning’s stories offer a rich store of metaphors for this abandonment: the downed tools of a deserted East German factory, lying exactly where they were dropped the day Communism fell; the old, collected cameras of a late father that seem to stare, wide-eyed, at the world he left behind. And yet, underpinning this abandonment, there is also great resilience. Like the cat spotted by a demolition worker in the penultimate story that sits, unflinching, as its home is bulldozed around it, certain spirits abide.Trade Review'Just as her stories seem made up of random incidents yoked casually together by place or time, so, too, does their very telling appear contingent, uncertain. It’s as though she has created her own literature of non sequiturs, stops and starts - yet each detail... is rivetingly real and mysterious, mimesis and metaphor both... These quiet, idiosyncratic stories are highly articulate even in their silences.' - Dundee University Review of the Arts
£11.77
Comma Press Jebel Marra
Book SynopsisMish Green – a former aid worker in Darfur – re-tells the story of the 2004 civil war from 15 different perspectives, capturing by turns the brutal indifference of the government war machine, the terrible scars inflicted on individuals caught in its path, and the complex melting pot of experiences that constitutes any relief effort.
£11.77
Parthian Books Too Cold for Snow
Book SynopsisA paid assassin called Krink loads up on viper-spit to tackle some uber-thugs; the governor of a prison ship introduces his inmates to haute cuisine; a farmer wakes up after an avalanche in north Wales to find he's the last man alive. The stories in this zany new collection range freely, almost chaotically, from the taiga region of northern Russia to the depths of despair. They are fuelled by a high octane imagination and an uncommon zest for language. A thrilling collection from a stunningly original voice. A journey in stories through a fabulous and fascinating fictional new world.Trade Review"Gower's tales possess a primal, almost savage formality that's far removed from the calmer precisions and interiority of the mitered short story. They are also exhilarating and lush and knowing and in all ways bespeak authenticity." --Richard Ford "Jon Gower's fiction is mad in the best possible way -- human, funny and startling. Too Cold for Snow takes familiar Welsh figures -- rugby players, miners, hill-farmers -- and transforms them into objects of delight, horror and revelation. I loved it." Deborah Kay Davies "A brilliant collection that gives you 'Jon Gower Relish' -- a relish for the adventure that is language, for the crazy and precious spark that is life." Tiffany Murray
£12.36
Parthian Books Goldfish memory
Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to have a connection with someone? Everyday you see tens and hundreds of faces and overhear countless conversations. Everyday you pass people by - on the street. In the office. In the car. In cafes and bars. Down the corridors of department stores and hotel rooms. But what makes one person a stranger, and another a friend, an accomplice, even a lover? A traveler shuts himself up in his hotel room, with no-one but room service to talk to; a teenager stalks her long-lost father; a journalist interviews a great poet with a dark past; a woman pursues a doomed liaison with an anonymous man she meets once a month at the casino; a bar lady locked in with the regulars at night...These are just some of the tales exploring the mysterious and random side of human relationships. From the winner of the prestigious Robert Walser First Novel Award and Switzerland's Schiller Foundation Writers Prize, Goldfish Memory is the first translation of Monique Schwitter's form-breaking work. With a contemporary style that's cool, quick and funny, this collection is a refreshing new voice, not to be missed.Trade Review"With intelligence and compassion, Schwitter portrays the sorry contradictions and sad inconsistencies of what it is to be human; the shoulds, coulds, woulds, what ifs and might have beens that litter our beautiful, flawed lives. Here is humanity stripped bare. It is in turn both discomfiting and strangely reassuring. The writing is stretched taut by the emotions and multiple layers it contains. The characters might be mad, sad, paranoid and delusional, but the clipped, incisive writing is stringently unsentimental. Eluned Gramich's wondrously imperceptible translation of Schwitter's German deserves more than a footnote or a brief aside... Not once did I feel the translation announce itself in an awkward sentence, an odd turn of phrase, a lazy word choice or even a misplaced comma. This, I think, is rare. Gramich has stepped into Schwitter's mind, just as Schwitter steps into the minds of her characters. It makes for a stylish dual debut." (New Welsh Review) "One of the most delightful [works] that our literature has brought forth in recent times." (Zurich Tages-Anzeiger) "In her prose style, Monique Schwitter succeeds in creating masterworks of the short form." (Klaus Zeyringer, Der Standard) "The fatalist power of these stories is enormous." (Michael Braun, Basler Zeitung) "This extraordinary book throws the reader against a wall." (Helmut Schodel, Suddeutsche Zeitung)
£16.10
Comma Press The BBC National Short Story Award 2017: No.12
Book SynopsisThe twelfth year of the incredibly successful anthology of the BBC National Short Story Award shortlist. This year, no.1 bestselling author Joanna Trollope will be chairing the judging panel, taking the mantle from Radio 4's 'Women's Hour' presenter Jenny Murray. Trollope, known as one of the most insightful chroniclers and social commentators writing today is also a long-time short story writer. Trollope is joined by an esteemed panel of award-winning writers and literary specialists: Baileys Prize winner, Eimear McBride (Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction), Jon McGregor (IMPAC Award, short story writer and academic), Sunjeev Sahota (Encore Award winner), and returning judge Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio. All the judges are eager to read the best, and most innovative, works of short fiction from new and established writers. Last year's winner was K J Orr with her story 'Disappearances'. As always, this book will be strictly embargoed until the announcement of the shortlist on Radio 4's Front Row at 7:15pm on Friday 15th September. The shortlisted stories will be broadcast between Monday 18th - Friday 22nd September accompanied by interviews with the authors from the 15th September. The winner will be announced in a live broadcast from the Award ceremony on BBC Radio 4's Front Row from 7.15pm on Tuesday 3 October 2017. Previous shortlisted authors include Hilary Mantel, David Constantine, Lionel Shriver and Zadie Smith.
£13.18
Parthian Books A Day's Pleasure and Other Tales
Book SynopsisEdited with an introduction by Daniel Hughes 'A restless shape-shifter from the mysterious Welsh Marches, Heseltine was as elusive in his idiosyncratic writing as in his extraordinary globetrotting life. It is good to have his work briefly pinned down in this groundbreaking collection for closer inspection.' - Professor M.Wynn Thomas Cariad County: a place of anarchy and farce, of the grotesque and the slapstick, of tragedy and violent comedy, where the local hunt is disrupted by a camel-riding hero, where the town hall burns down as the town cheers, a place haunted by grotesque revenants from the First World War. This is the world of Nigel Heseltine's short stories, fantastic fictions which lampoon and lament the slow decline of the once-powerful squires and landowners of mid-Wales, the very Montgomeryshire of which Heseltine (1916-1995) formed a part. Nigel Heseltine is a long-neglected member of Wales's 'Golden Generation' of English-language short story writers which included Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies and Glyn Jones. His stories appeared alongside theirs in major magazines such as English Story and Penguin New Writing in the 1930s and 1940s. This volume re-prints for the first time since their initial publication the stories published in Heseltine's Tales of the Squirearchy (1946), alongside a substantial number of stories never previously collected. Ranging from the starkly surreal to the subtly moving, these tales reveal Nigel Heseltine as a singularly talented writer, the equal of his better-known contemporaries.Trade Review'A restless shape-shifter from the mysterious Welsh Marches, Heseltine was as elusive in his idiosyncratic writing as in his extraordinary globetrotting life. It is good to have his work briefly pinned down in this groundbreaking collection for closer inspection.' Professor M.Wynn Thomas
£16.20
Parthian Books Queer Square Mile: Queer Short Stories from Wales
Book SynopsisIn these stories gender refuses to be fixed: a dashing travelling companion is not quite who he seems in the intimate darkness of a mail coach, a girl on the cusp of adulthood gamely takes her father's place as head of the house, and an actor and patron are caught up in dangerous game-playing. In the more fantastical tales there are talking rats, flirtations with fascism, and escape from a post-virus 'utopia'. These are stories of sexual awakening, coming out and redefining one's place in the world. Release and a certain heady license may be found in the distant cities of Europe or north Africa, but the stories are for the most part located in familiar Welsh settings - a schoolroom, a provincial town, a mining village, a tourist resort, a sacred island. The intensity of desire, whether overt, playful, or coded, makes this a rich and often surprising collection that reimagines what being queer and Welsh has meant in different times and places.
£999.99
Parthian Books Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?
Book SynopsisWhatever happened to Rick Astley? She imagined that he was happily married with children. A record producer, perhaps? That was the usual way with singers, wasn't it? From Bryony Rheam, the award-winning author of All Come to Dust and This September Sun, comes a collection of sixteen short stories shining a spotlight on life in Zimbabwe over the last twenty years. The daily routines and the greater fate of ordinary Zimbabweans are represented with a deft, compassionate touch and flashes of humour. From the potholed side streets of Bulawayo to lush, blooming gardens, traversing down- at-heel bars and faded drawing rooms, the stories in Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? ring with hope and poignancy, and pay tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.Trade Review'Bryony Rheam’s short stories are skilled, perfectly formed, and compelling; the characters are largely outsiders – whether geographically, culturally or emotionally – and completely realised, inhabiting detailed and believable worlds. In all, Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is a deeply satisfying collection.' Karen Jennings, author of An Island; 'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?, Bryony Rheam’s wonderful collection of short stories, deals with loss—loss of identity, loss of memory, loss of country, loss of someone you love. While the theme seems to be a heavy one, the stories capture the beauty and the magic of the ordinary. There is nostalgia here for what once was, but there is also a lot of hope for what could be. Anything that can give us hope in today’s day and age is truly amazing, and that is what this collection is.' Siphiwe Ndlovu, author of Theory of Flight
£10.00
Parthian Books The Bright Plain
Book SynopsisA reliable and clean source of water is essential for any community, so it is easy to understand how important wells were for pre-modern peoples. More complex is the mystical relationship humans have developed with these sites, which are imbued with a sacredness that predates Christianity. Holy Wells of Wexford and Pembrokeshire is a series of five chapbooks celebrating holy wells in two regions with common ancestry and history. Since at least the Bronze Age, sea travel between these two lands has meant cross-fertilisation of traditions and common names associated with wells of both regions. Of significance is the long-standing friendship between two early Christian saints: David, who became the first Bishop of St Davids; and Aidan, born in Ireland, who spent time in Wales and then founded monasteries in Ireland, including at Ferns. In Oilgate, Wexford, there is a well dedicated to David and, at Whitesands near St Davids in Pembrokeshire, there is one named after Aidan. Each of the five books approaches the subject from different perspectives and mediums, including fiction, poetry and essays as well as photographs and prints.
£10.33
Parthian Books Miss Cross and Other Stories
Book SynopsisNorman Schwenk's animal stories are a long way from Disneyland. They focus on the strange, complicated links people forge with animals, and how they illuminate the even more mysterious links people have with other people.
£10.00
Parthian Books Men Alone
Book SynopsisMen Alone is a meditative vision from a unique voice that explores the many often confounding permutations of modern masculinity
£10.00
Jantar Publishing Ltd Dead
Book SynopsisDead is Balla's most recent book and marks a glorious return to the short story form. The stories are very topical dealing with the theme of masculinity, how that is expressed in different forms of aggressive nationalism, Slovak 'nativism' and delusional male interior monologues.
£18.61
IFWG Publishing Australia Bedding the Lamia: Tropical Horrors
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£13.49
IFWG Publishing Australia Almost Human: A Collection of Short Stories
£15.39
IFWG Publishing Australia Songs from a White Heart
£9.81
IFWG Publishing Australia Turning of the Seasons: A Dark Almanac
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£12.59
IFWG Publishing Australia Rest in Pieces: Short Stories
£15.30
Ifwg Publishing International Midnight Masquerade
Book Synopsis
£14.39
Ifwg Publishing International Black Days and Bloody Nights
£13.05
Ifwg Publishing International The Frankincense Monster and Other Creepy Christmas Stories
£12.06
IFWG Publishing Australia Sunset Tales: Haunted Tales of Africa
£9.81
IFWG Publishing Australia Coralesque and Other Tales to Disturb and
Book Synopsis
£11.69
Baraka Books Principals and Other Schoolyard Bullies: Short
Book SynopsisA collection of short stories, this book features a narrative that, while unified by a dark theme, is diverse and surprisingly optimistic. The voices that recount the stories differ significantly, yet all resonate with the clarity of unmistakable truth. Avoiding the kind of graphic violence inherent in dealing with a topic like bullying, this compilation favors qualities such as courage and fortitude, sometimes displayed in the face of intimidating odds. Detailed and compassionate, it even manages to find humor as it tackles this otherwise sinister topic.Trade ReviewThis quick, engaging read highlights the 'sudden visceral reaction' that warns students as they meet a bully. Clearly written, these stories will help teachers, parents, and students to recognize the bullying experience but can be appreciated by all and should attract a general audience. Recommended." —Library Journal (August 15, 2011)"Tells the truth about school through these eclectic stories about the complicated lives of both students and educators, and a system that often purports to be about doing good, and ends up being something else entirely. Fonda's child characters are well-drawn, coming to life on the page with intelligence and imagination." —Zoe Whittall, prize-winning poet and novelist, The Middle Ground"Readers will be lulled by [Fonda's] perfectly crafted, streamlined prose, while images of cruelty and betrayal sneak up in surprise. . . . His poet's ear brings a delicate lightness to his work that contrasts wonderfully with the dark subject matter. . . . It's not the setting or even the events in these stories that make readers shudder, it's the familiarity of the characters under attack. . . . Fonda manages to get to the heart of a social problem in an entertaining, thought-provoking book that is both a pleasure to read and a call to awareness." —Foreword Reviews (September 2011)
£16.96
Baraka Books On the Crow and Other Stories
Book SynopsisRobert Poirier reveals an exceptional skill at bringing to life the people with whom he lives and the land he inhabits and loves. In five stories and one novella, readers escape the city, live in the wilds, and experience the challenges of nature, including human nature, in all its complexity. Be it love lost on a canoe trip; conflicting values and naked conflict between natives and newcomers; the dangers, excitement, and solitude of winter traveling and camping with dogsleds; or the barroom and prison enforcer straight out of a Johnny Cash song, Poirier writes brilliantly about what he knows best.
£16.96
Theytus Books Red Rooms
£18.00
The Library of America Philip Roth: Novels 1967-1972 (LOA #158): When
Book SynopsisIn this, the second volume of The Library of America’s definitive edition of the collected works of Philip Roth, published by special arrangement with the author, the range and inventiveness of Roth’s fiction is dazzlingly displayed in four extraordinarily diverse works.When She Was Good (1967) is the trenchant portrait of Lucy Nelson, a young midwestern woman whose perception of her own suffering turns her into a ferocious force, “enemy-ridden and unforgivingly defiant,” as Roth would later describe her. A small-town 1940s America of restrictive social pressures and foreclosed opportunities provides the novel’s background.The publication of the hilarious Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) was a cultural event that turned Roth into a reluctant celebrity. The confession of a bewildered psychoanalytic patient thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality yet held back by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood, Portnoy unleashed Roth’s comic virtuosity and opened new avenues for American fiction.In Our Gang (1971), described by Anthony Burgess as a “brilliant satire in the real Swift tradition,” Roth effects a savage takedown of the administration of Richard Nixon (who figures here as Trick E. Dixon). Written before the revelations of the Watergate scandal, Our Gang continues to resonate as a broad and outraged response to the clownish hypocrisy and moral theatrics of the American political scene.The Kafkaesque excursion The Breast (1972) introduces David Kepesh in the first volume of a trilogy that continues with The Professor of Desire (1977) and The Dying Animal (2001). The Breast prompted Cynthia Ozick to remark, “One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture.”LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
£26.25
University Press of New England The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales 19 Portuguese in the Americas
Book SynopsisBorn from the fertile volcanic soil and the sea and mists surrounding the Azorean islands, the characters who inhabit these stories blend realism with magic. Like the nine Muses, each island has its own special attributes. Whether searching for love, power, or meaning, these characters are subject to the whims of Fate and Fortune. Here the commonplace present confronts forces both natural and supernatural. In the Azorean microcosm, they come to represent a far larger sphere, embodying the foibles and idiosyncrasies of humanity the world over.
£16.10
Islandport Press Love on the Rocks: Stories of Rusticators and
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£19.14
Four Way Books Lessons in Another Language A Novella and Stories
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Four Way Books 57 Octaves Below Middle C
Book SynopsisA hybrid collection comprised of short stories, flash fiction, and prose poems, the works in 57 Octaves Below Middle C enact the dilemma of self-forgetting. This book is for any reader who hears the states of dissonance that are disturbing and natural aspects of the human comedy.
£999.99
Tin House Books You Only Get Letters from Jail
Book Synopsis
£13.46
Catapult We Were Flying to Chicago
Book SynopsisIn this striking debut collection, characters find unexpected moments of profound insight while navigating daily life.Clouther’s first collection of stories shows an 'old' talent—meaning, his sophistication in treatment and technique and his wise observations of the human condition have the feel of an author who has the experience of several story collections behind him.—Booklist, starred reviewSharply observed.—Toronto StarThe 10 entries in Clouther’s debut collection all display a sure-handed grasp of craft.—Publishers WeeklyIn this striking debut collection, characters find unexpected moments of profound insight while navigating the monotony of daily life. Here we find a man who drives to the wrong mountain, a hubcap cleaner who moonlights as a karaoke star, and a deliveryman whose urgent letters have no willing recipient. While lulled by the deceptively simple rhythm of the ordinary, Kevin Clouther offers the instant before momentous change—the view over the cliff, the intake of breath before a decision, a glimpse of stark vulnerability, of faith and hope.
£11.56
Two Dollar Radio White Dialogues
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£14.39
Two Dollar Radio Alligator
Book Synopsis
£14.39
McSweeney's Publishing Painted Cities
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£17.99
McSweeney's Publishing Further Joy
£21.60
Archipelago Books Good Will Come From The Sea
Book SynopsisSeeking to escape the paralysing effects of the Greek economic crisis, a group of Athenian friends move to an Aegean island in the hopes of starting over. Viewed with suspicion and disdain by the locals, they soon find themselves enmeshed in the same vicious cycle of money, power, and violence they thought they had left behind.Trade ReviewLonglisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Award"The first story, 'I’ll Swallow Your Dreams,' from Christos Ikonomou’s Good Will Come From the Sea—a dystopian collection about Greece’s economic devastation—blew my head off with its tender and awful brutality."— Maggie Nelson, in The New York TimesIkonomou "approaches the grimness and desperation of his characters’ lives with lightness and humor, in an idiomatic Greek seamlessly translated by Karen Emmerich . . . 'Good Will Come From the Sea' follows Ikonomou’s 'Something Will Happen, You’ll See,' another story collection about the lives of working-class Athenians, which won a prestigious national award. Together, these books make a persuasive case for regarding Ikonomou as Greece’s most original and perceptive chronicler of his country’s fears and yearnings." — Fani Papageorgiou, The New York Times "All four of the tales here examine themes of exploitation, class conflict, and deep discontent, suggesting that life in 21st-century Greece is far more dystopian than idyllic. A grim set of stories in which characters feel imprisoned and current social conditions don't allow much room for hope." — Kirkus Reviews"The impressive diversity of voices adds depth to the bleakness of these lives trapped on the brink of survival. This powerful collection will move readers with its focus on despairing people battered by forces beyond their control." — Publishers Weekly"These stories are tumultuous journeys from despair to hope and back to despair, masterfully rendered by Ikonomou... Absent are any woodenness or awkwardness, testament to the quality of the translation by Karen Emmerich, a veteran translator of contemporary Greek fiction who has rendered the book with such nuance that it has the nimbleness of something originally written in English." – Niko Maragos, Los Angeles Review of Books"(Ikonomou) delivers stories of the marginalized, the underdogs, weaving together a provincial cosmos from a panoply of nearly palpable voices, finally insisting in his fiction on “the indestructibility of man” ... Ikonomou lets loose astounding images ... They are protests against the loss of story, and reach into the primal place in our souls." — Leeore Schnairsohn, Los Angeles Review of Books "About halfway through Christos Ikonomou’s Good Will Come from the Sea, as the titular story wound to an end, I realized I hadn’t been breathing. My eyes were trained on the text, moving determinedly down the page, but my breath had caught somewhere between my lungs and the roof of my mouth...Karen Emmerich’s faultless translation is populated by people fighting to maintain their livelihoods and dignity under circumstances beyond their small, human control. To say this is a book about the crisis would be too limiting. Rather, it is a book about people staring foggily into a future difficult to discern while trying to navigate an unmarked present." — Julia Sanches, in Three Percent"Ikonomou masterfully takes readers inside narrow points of view to reveal both their biases and the deeply felt motives behind those biases. The result is a highly empathetic and often darkly funny portrait of a country at war with itself. ... Without denying or belittling his country’s pain, Ikonomou writes of a Greece where the sun still rises." — Ellie Robins, BOMB"Ikonomou's style veers between flights of incantatory lyricism and volleys of funny lines and tough street talk. Again one wants to praise Karen Emmerich's translation . . . The rhapsodic lyricism and dry gallows humor, the speed and nimbleness of the tonal shifts, drew me in to these books. The sympathy of Ikonomou's characterization—the humanity he captures on the page—made me keep reading." — Francine Prose, Harper's Magazine"In this collection, some characters are hardened by their experiences, some find courage, and some lose themselves in delusions. Each of their stories is gripping from the first to the last." — Christopher Byrd, Vulture"The stories in Good Will Come from the Sea explode off the page then dig beneath the skin. Irreverent yet unabashedly vulnerable, surreal yet grounded in the most visceral emotions, Ikonomou has given us characters that leap up and take hold and never quite let us go. This book is spectacular." -- Maaza Mengiste Praise for Christos Ikonomou's Something Will Happen, You'll See:"In much the way John Steinbeck laid open the migrant worker culture of mid-century California, Ikonomou exposes us to the realities of Greek poverty, the bitter taste of politics, and the generational divide. These stories are pitch-perfect, with sullen anger, wit, sharp humor, and tragicomedy captured in sharply crafted scenes that linger in the memory."--Los Angeles Review of Books"A gripping collection of short stories... In Ikonomou's concrete streets, the rain is always looming, the politicians' slogans are ignored, and the police remain a violent, threatening presence offstage. Yet even at the edge of destitution, his men and women act for themselves, trying to preserve what little solidarity remains in a deeply atomized society, and in one way or another finding their own voice. There is faith here, deep faith--though little or none in those who habitually ask for it."--Mark Mazower, The Nation"Something Will Happen is a heart-breaking and essential portrait of Greece's modern despair, and while there are hopeful moments scattered throughout, the ones that ring truest are apocalyptic."--The Paris Review"The seamlessness with which the past breaches the surface of the present is astounding. Reading this book makes you read into yourself."--Zyzzyva"Ikonomou's Something Will Happen, You'll See depicts many lives, of all ages, that have been blighted by financial hardship. The book stands with Rafael Chirbes's On the Edge as one of the remarkable literary interpretations of the recent global downturn."--Christopher Byrd, Barnes and Noble Review
£14.24
