Author:Katherine Mansfield
A beautiful new hardback edition of Katherine Mansfield's most vivid and distinctive stories.
Katherine Mansfield was the only writer Virginia Woolf envied. Mansfield transformed the short story genre with her work, creating stories miraculous in their intensity yet seemingly so simple. The shift of a heart, the beat of a moment, the changing of the light: in these stories emotional universes are contained within glimpses.
Mansfield only lived to the age of 34 but in that time wrote stories true to her indomitable spirit. A hundred years on from her death, Mansfield's biographer, Claire Harman, has created this new selection to show us the master of the short story form in full flight.
WITH A FOREWORD BY HELEN SIMPSON AND INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE HARMAN
'There is something rapturous about her work...she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance' Guardian
'Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people' Katherine Mansfield
Predating Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Mansfield's late stories...transformed the short story genre by casting a fleeting, impressionist glance at the ordinary details of domestic existence
—— Paris ReviewHer economy, the boldness of her comic gift, her speed, her dramatic changes of the point of interest, her power to dissolve and reassemble a character and situation by a few lines
—— V S Pritchett, 1946 , New Statesman'The Daughters of the Late Colonel'...perhaps her greatest achievement, describes two spinsters whose overbearing father has just died. It flickers between comedy, menace, outlandish interludes and engulfing sorrow with consummate skill
—— GuardianShe was not a kind or gentle writer. ['The Doll's House'] could be sentimental in the hands of a lesser writer, but she knew better than that. She spares nobody
—— Margaret Drabble , GuardianThere is something rapturous about her work: through her acute eye and cool, appraising descriptions, she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance
—— GuardianThis wide-ranging collection of her [Mansfield's] short stories is a vivid reminder of what a brave and innovative write she was... Glittering gems -- read one every day
—— Daily MailFerociously talented
—— JUSTIN TORRES, author of We the AnimalsA whole body experience.
—— THEMNo one writes like K-Ming Chang. Wise, energetic, funny, and wild, Gods of Want displays a boundless imagination anchored by the weight of ancestors and history. These stories sing, a true force to behold.
—— KALI FAJARDO-ANSTINE, author of Sabrina and CorinaIn the genre of feminine madness, these stories are to be worshipped. They are fearless, hysterical, violent yet full of grace. Each sentence escalates toward devastating, poetic insight about our bodies, about cultural demands both treasured and feared, and about what makes being alive a terror and a joy.
—— VENITA BLACKBURN, author of How to Wrestle a GirlChang returns with a dazzling collection of stories within stories that draw on old myths to embody the heartache and memories of Asian American women. Chang's bold conceits and potent imagery evoke a raw, visceral power that captures feelings of deep longing and puts them into words. This stellar collection will leave readers hungry for more.
—— Publishers Weekly (starred review)This book traces a line from old worlds to new worlds by means of the bloody umbilical cords that stretch between them. . . . These stories unthread the tangled relationships between mothers and daughter, aunts and cousins, siblings and lovers . . . a lingering sense that language, as well as life, is infinitely adaptable, no matter the ground on which it is given to grow. Lurid, funny, strange, and deftly sorrowing-an important new voice.
—— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Dazzling . . . This stellar collection will leave readers hungry for more.
—— Publishers Weekly (starred review)[K-Ming Chang] rewrites the world as a place of radical transformation.
—— New York Times Book Review[Her] ability, to take a common, decidedly earthbound, experience and transform it through her lens into a fantastical, otherworldly encounter shines. . . . Chang's writing reflects her gift as a lifelong listener of oral storytelling . . . and her ability to synthesize new ideas with her own spin on language.
—— San Francisco ChronicleChang has a special talent for forging history into myth and myth into present-day fiction. . . . Gods of Want is in some ways a fantasy of queer freedom. Its main characters, all Taiwanese or Chinese by birth or descent, are allowed to be who they are, to love and make love to whomever they choose.
—— Los Angeles Times[K-Ming Chang] is back with her signature precise and enthralling prose in this short-story collection.
—— ShondalandK-Ming Chang's inspired mix of magic and realism returns in full fabulist force. . . . The stories are eclectic . . . and united by Chang's fascination with the queer and quotidian in her characters' worlds. . . . Piercing.
—— EsquireHer new short-story collection Gods of Want both widens and calcifies the expansiveness of her range. . . . Chang is singular amongst us all. . . . New work from Chang is a cause for celebration-a holiday in its own right-and it's also a reminder of the infinite possibilities on the page. . . . Nothing short of marvelous.
—— Bryan Washington , Electric Literature