Name: American Innovations
Price: 39.64 NZD
Availability: InStock
Author: Rivka Galchen
ISBN: 9781250069238

Type

Physical Book

Author

Rivka Galchen

Publisher

Picador

Language

English

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

21.3 x 13.7 x 1.3 cm

Weight

0.25 kg.

ISBN13

9781250069238

Synopsis "American Innovations"

A BRILLIANT NEW COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES FROM THE CONSPICUOUSLY TALENTED (TIME) RIVKA GALCHEN Winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award A New York Times Book Review Notable BookChosen as one of fifteen remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write in the 21st century by the book critics of The New York Times In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka Galchen's American Innovations, a young woman's furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family. The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, reimagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens's Anecdote of the Jar responds to John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, Galchen's The Lost Order covertly recapitulates James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, while The Region of Unlikeness is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges's The Aleph. The title story, American Innovations, revisits Nikolai Gogol's The Nose. By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today.

Rivka Galchen

(Author)

View Author's Page

Rivka Galchen is a Canadian-American writer and journalist born in Toronto in 1976. She is the author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances (2008), which received the William Saroyan International Prize for Fiction. Her collection of short stories American Innovations (2014) was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and her novel Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (2021) was a finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her work spans genres such as literary fiction, essays, and short narrative.

Galchen is a regular contributor to magazines like The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Times. She studied medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and earned an MFA in creative writing at Columbia University, where she also teaches. In 2010, she was included in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list, highlighting the most promising writers under 40 years old. Her style is characterized by a sharp and original look at reality, with an approach that combines humor, science, and emotional exploration.

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