You Are Not a Stranger Here - Stories

Zusatztext “Spectacular. . . . You should buy this book! you should read it! and you should admire it. . . . [It] is the herald of a phenomenal career.” — The New York Times Book Review “Extraordinary. . . . Frighteningly tender. . . . Displays an order as natural as a tree branch in winter—lithe and achingly austere.” — The Boston Globe “Haslett possesses a rich assortment of literary gifts: an instinctive empathy for his characters and an ability to map their inner lives in startling detail; a knack for graceful! evocative prose; and a determination to trace the hidden arithmetic of relationships.” — The New York Times “Fascinating. . . . Haslett is an eloquent! precise miniaturist.” — The New Yorker “Elegant. . . . Invigorating. . . . [Haslett has an] assured! almost democratic empathy for his admirably varied characters. . . . These are graceful! mature! witty stories.” — San Francisco Chronicle Informationen zum Autor Adam Haslett is the author of the novel Imagine Me Gone ; the short story collection You Are Not A Stranger Here , which was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and which won the PEN/Winship Award; and the novel Union Atlantic , which won the Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. His books have been translated into eighteen languages, and he has received the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, the PEN/Malamud Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. He lives in New York City. Klappentext In these unforgettable stories, the acclaimed author of Imagine Me Gone explores lives that appear shuttered by loss and discovers entire worlds hidden inside them. The impact is at once harrowing and thrilling. An elderly inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son. A bereaved boy draws a thuggish classmate into a relationship of escalating guilt and violence. A genteel middle-aged woman, a long-time resident of a psychiatric hospital, becomes the confidante of a lovelorn teenaged volunteer. Told with Chekhovian restraint and compassion, and conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it, You Are Not a Stranger Here is a triumph of storytelling.Notes to My Biographer Two things to get straight from the beginning: I hate doctors and have never joined a support group in my life. At seventy-three, I'm not about to change. The mental health establishment can go screw itself on a barren hill top in the rain before I touch their snake oil or listen to the visionless chatter of men half my age. I have shot Germans in the fields of Normandy, filed twenty-six patents, married three women, survived them all and am currently the subject of an investigation by the IRS, which has about as much chance of collecting from me as Shylock did of getting his pound of flesh. Bureaucracies have trouble thinking clearly. I, on the other hand, am perfectly lucid. Note for instance how I obtained the Saab I'm presently driving into the Los Angeles basin: a niece in Scotsdale lent it to me. Do you think she'll ever see it again? Unlikely. Of course when I borrowed it from her I had every intention of returning it and in a few days or weeks I may feel that way again, but for now forget her and her husband and three children who looked at me over the kitchen table like I was a museum piece sent to bore them. I could run circles around those kids. They're spoon fed ritalin and private schools and have eyes that say give me things I don't have. I wanted to read them a book on the history of the world, its migrations, plagues, and wars, but the shelves of their outsized condominium were full of ceramics and biographies of the stars. The whole thing depressed the hell out of me and I'm glad to be gone. A week ago ...

Product details

• Authors: Adam Haslett
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 12.08.2003
• EAN: 9780385720724
• ISBN: 978-0-385-72072-4
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 205 mm x 15 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature