Bücher der Reihe Art of the Story

The classic debut collection from Pulitzer Prize winner James Alan McPhersonHue and Cry is the remarkably mature and agile debut story collection from James Alan McPherson, one of America's most venerated and most original writers. McPherson's characters -- gritty, authentic, and pristinely rendered -- give voice to unheard struggles along the dividing lines of race and poverty in subtle, fluid prose that bears no trace of sentimentality, agenda, or apology.First published in 1968, this collection includes the Atlantic Prize-winning story ?Gold Coast? (selected by John Updike for the collection Best American Short Stories of the Century). Now with a new preface by Edward P. Jones, Hue and Cry introduced America to McPherson's unforgettable, enduring vision, and distinctive artistry.

Jenny Diski's prose is as sharp and steely as her imagination is wild and wondrous. When she died of cancer in April 2016, after chronicling her illness in an unforgettable series of essays in the London Review of Books, she was mourned by readers, admirers, and critics around the world, who had come to love the cool and unflinching tone that defined her singular voice. She explored the subjects of sex, power, domesticity, femininity, hysteria, and loneliness with humor and honesty.The stories in The Vanishing Princess showcase a rarely seen side of this beloved writer. In a Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale turned on its head, a miller's daughter rises to power and wealth to outwit the title villain. ?Bath Time? tells the story of a woman's life through her attempts to build the perfect bathtub, chasing an elusive moment of peace. In ?Short Circuit,? the author mines her own bouts in mental institutionsoutside London to question whether those we think are mad are really the sanest among us. Sharper, more experimental than her novels, The Vanishing Princess presents Jenny Diski as we knew her but also as we could never quite capture her irreverent, bizarre, political, morose, and gloriously unruly on the page.