Böcker av David Means

Finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates PrizeA new collection of stories by David Means, a visionary "master of the form" (The Observer). Two nurses meet in the hospital parking lot to share a cigarette. They flirt and imagine a future together. They tell stories of patients lost and patients saved, of the darkest corners of human suffering and the luminous moments that break through, even here, in the shadow of death.In David Means's virtuosic new collection, time unfolds in unexpected ways: a single, quiet moment swells with the echoes of a widower's complicated marriage; a dachshund, given a new name and a new life by a new owner, catches the scent of the troubled man who previously abandoned her; young lovers become old; estranged couples return to their vows; and those who have died live on in perpetuity in the memories of those whom they touched. The stories in this collection-which have won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize, and have been featured in The Best American Short Stories-confirm the promise of a writer who "believes in the power of stories to rescue and redeem people" (Max Liu, Financial Times).A revelatory meditation on trauma and catharsis, isolation and communion, Two Nurses, Smoking reflects the dislocations and anguish of our age, as well as the humanity and humor that buoy us.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

At the bitter end of the 1960s, upon his return home from combat in the Vietnam War, twenty-two-year old Eugene Allen writes a novel called HYSTOPIA.

THE SPOT is an old blacksmith shed in which a gang of men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery. THE SPOT is a place deep in Riverside Park, along the Hudson River, where two lovers walk with a keen sense that their adultery is about to come to an end. THE SPOT is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats as if caught in the tangled currents of her own tragic story. THE SPOT is a place in a young father's mind where love, fear and responsibility merge in the struggle with his son's potentially devastating diagnosis. THE SPOT lies in the eardrum of a madman plagued by a noisy upstairs neighbour on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This highly anticipated collection by internationally acclaimed short story master David Means is exceptional not only in it's language but also in the diversity of the narratives, as he searches out with delicate precision the intricate relationship between immortality and grace.

The paperback of the critically acclaimed story collection from David Means.