Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017

An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time

I can't recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book. Simultaneously, I'm shocked and scandalized. She's brilliant, this young woman.--David Sedaris

Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel.

And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a Boston-based fiction writer. Fence, Noon, Vice, The Paris Review, and other literary publications and online journals have published her short stories. She received the Plimpton Discovery Prize for her stories in The Paris Review last year, as well as the Modern Prize in Prose from Fence Books, which will publish her first novel, McGlue, in November 2014. The National Endowment for the Arts recently awarded her a creative writing fellowship. She has a BA in English from Barnard College and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University, and she is currently a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, where she is working on a new novel and a collection of short stories. She lives in Oakland, California.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780399562884
ISBN 10	0399562885
Title	Homesick for Another World
Author	Ottessa Moshfegh
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2017-01-17
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.