Description:
In this short story collection, Marilyn Krysl gets us to empathize with characters who are simply too unhappy or idealistic to be much fun.
Brief description:
Marilyn Krysl has published three collections of stories and seven volumes of poetry. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Prize Stories.
Review Quotes:
"We may have to invent a new term--'the political lyric, ' perhaps--to describe the 'airy speech and inspired story' in Marilyn Krysl's brilliant new collection of short fiction, Dinner with Osama. Here are stories that range from the whimsical 'Air, A Romance, ' in which Krysl uses white space and typographical layout in a manner more typical of poetry than fiction, to the disturbing novella 'Welcome to the Torture Center, Love, ' where the horrors of the Sudan are the heart of a love story. What holds all the fiction together, as much as the impassioned political and cultural concerns that inform them, is the writing, which is lyrical in the best sense, lyrical as in musical, expressive, and vivid." --Ed Falco, author of Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha: New and Selected Stories