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'By opening this book, you've given Patricia Highsmith permission to follow you, catch you, take you apart. Get ready to run' Carmen Maria MachadoPatricia Highsmith was one of the great twentieth-century fiction writers, celebrated for classics
The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and
Strangers on a Train, but she was also a masterful and prolific short-story writer. This definitive collection, featuring two stories that have never been published before, reveals Highsmith as a genius of the genre. Peerlessly disturbing, exhilarating and brutally funny, Highsmith's stories are as relevant and startling today as when they were first written, presenting a world that is frightening, familiar and brimming with menace.
'Every story shimmers like a dark gem as Patricia Highsmith turns her gimlet eye on domesticity, suburban madness, toxic families and the loneliness of childhood. Often mordantly funny and always psychologically acute, this collection is not to be missed' Megan Abbott
'I love Highsmith so much . . . What a revelation her writing is' Gillian Flynn
About the author
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year, she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.
Summary
* 'By opening this book, you've given Patricia Highsmith permission to follow you, catch you, take you apart. Get ready to run' CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
* 'Every story shimmers like a dark gem as Highsmith turns her gimlet eye on domesticity, suburban madness, toxic families and the loneliness of childhood. Often mordantly funny and always psychologically acute, this collection is not to be missed' MEGAN ABBOTT
* 'The sheer macabre, amoral brilliance of Patricia Highsmith surely makes her one of the finest writers in the English language' RICHARD OSMAN
INTRODUCED BY CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
Patricia Highsmith was one of the great twentieth-century novelists, celebrated for classics The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train, but she was also a masterful and prolific short-story writer. This definitive new collection, featuring two stories that have never been published before, confirms Highsmith as a genius of the genre. Peerlessly disturbing, exhilarating and savagely funny, Highsmith's stories still have the power to startle, presenting a world that is frighteningly familiar and as relevant today as when they were written.
* Includes two newly discovered stories
* This is the only volume of Highsmith's stories to select from a lifetime of short-story writing
Foreword
Published to celebrate the centenary of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers, this is the most comprehensive collection of Highsmith's short fiction. Includes two newly discovered stories.
Additional text
A writer who has created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger . . . Highsmith is the poet of apprehension
