The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek

The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek

The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, The Coast of Chicago is a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers.

I Sailed with Magellan (FSG, 2003), The Coast of Chicago (Picador, 2003), and a prior collection of poetry, Brass Knuckles, are among Stuart Dybek's works. He lives in Kalamazoo and works as an English professor at Western Michigan University.