Description

‘A major event … anyone reading these stories will discover a new awe for the mystery of human experience’ YIYUN LI

From one of the greatest writers of our time, Annie Proulx, comes a sweeping collection of her most celebrated short stories, alongside three new stories, gathered together for the first time.

In these stories, Annie Proulx delves into the lives of characters marked by loneliness, violence, desperation and the wrong kinds of love. Across the bracing landscapes of the American West, New England and New Foundland in Canada, we meet rodeo riders and cowboys, ranch and rural workers and down and out drifters. In her most acclaimed story, ‘Brokeback Mountain’, adapted into an award-winning film, a passionate affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world’s intolerance. In each tale, we witness the hard times and unlikely elation of those who feel tied to the land, or are desperate to escape it.

Spanning nearly thirty years and drawn from Proulx’s four collections, Annie Proulx Stories gathers her finest and best-loved stories together for the first time. Proulx’s titles alone announce the singular genius of a grimly witty and unflinchingly humane writer: ‘Tits up in a Ditch’; ‘What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick’; ‘People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water’.

Complete with three never before collected stories, this beautifully designed new volume confirms her as a master of the form and celebrates one of the greatest American writers at work today. It will be treasured by existing fans and a new generation of readers alike.

Publisher Review

‘This volume will mark a major event for American literature. The sheer beauty and the sheer power of the landscapes – those found in nature and those found in the characters’ hearts – strike the readers with such a force that anyone reading these stories will discover a new respect and a new awe for the mystery of human experience’ Yiyun Li, author of Things in Nature Merely Grow ‘Annie Proulx’s stories are rough ‘n tumble verbal adventures – precisely what I crave – full of riches, an astonishing command of lived life and much more than enough grace and mirth to keep us hopeful. This book is a big pay-off’ Richard Ford Praise for Annie Proulx: ‘A writer who casts a giant shadow over most of the competition’ Vogue ‘Proulx’s prose is beautiful, and her evocation of the wilds of Newfoundland makes the place jump off the page’ Sunday Times ‘Annie Proulx’s work is risk-taking, rigorous and poised. She works language almost to exhaustion, a ruthless poet hounding it for every nuance, every word whipped into lines in paragraph that build an astonishing stormy power’ Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, in New York Review of Books ‘As lean, confident and exact a stylist, and as good a storyteller, as you could hope for’ Guardian ‘Reading Proulx is a totally immersive experience’ The Times ‘Powerful … Read the stories for their absolute authenticity and their language, a wry poetry of loneliness and pain’ New York Times ‘Like a mystic seeing the transfigured universe, she recreates the beauty of ordinary things.’ Independent on Sunday ‘This is writing to be savoured’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Proulx’s fiction teems with life … Magical’ Tatler ‘One of America’s finest living writers’ Elle ‘A grand, inimitable writer’ Observer