A new collection of prophetic essays from one of the sharpest practitioners of the form Mark Slouka writes from a particular vantage point, one invoked by Thoreau, who wished 'to improve the nick of time . . . to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future.' At this bewildering convergence, Slouka asks us to consider what it means to be human and what we must revive, or reject, in order to retain our humanity in the modern world. Collected over fifteen years, these essays include fascinating explorations of the relationship between memory and history and the nature of 'tragedy' in a media-driven culture; meditations on the transcendent 'wisdom' of the natural world and...

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected - and most popular - of its kind.

The unnamed narrator of The Visible World, the American-born son of Czech immigrants living in New York, grows up in an atmosphere haunted by fragments of a past he cannot understand. Nowhere is this more true than in regard to his mother, Ivana, a spontaneous, passionate woman moving ever closer to genuine despair. As an adult, the narrator travels to Prague, hoping to learn about a love affair between his then young mother and a member of the Czech Resistance named Tomas, an affair whose untimely end, he senses, lays behind Ivana's unhappiness. Ultimately unable to complete his knowledge of the past, he imagines the two lovers as participants in one of the more dramatic moments of the...

Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka's parents survived the Nazis only to be forced to then escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial, admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit, and the lies we tell, in an attempt to reach his mother, the figure at the center of the labyrinth. Her story - the revelation of her lifelong burden and the...

In God's Fool Mark Slouka, the acclaimed author of Lost Lake and Other Stories, presents us with an unparalleled novel about Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins. In a masterstroke of creative storytelling, we experience their lives through Chang's eyes. Despite the incomparable predicament of their physical condition, Chang is wrapped in ordinary grace and suffering, searching for tranquility as he travels from Siam's marketplace to Parisian salons, to London's underworld and P.T. Barnum's side show, all the while improbably connected to a man who becomes his sworn enemy. In a last attempt at a normal life, Chang and Eng retire from the sideshow and move to the American South where...

"Intense and elegiac... devastatingly agile." - New York Times Book Review The year is 1968. The world is changing, and sixteen-year-old Jon Mosher is determined to change with it. Racked by guilt over his older brother's childhood death and stuck in the dead-end town of Brewster, New York, he turns his rage into victories running track. Meanwhile, Ray Cappicciano, a rebel as gifted with his fists as Jon is with his feet, is trying to take care of his baby brother while staying out of the way of his abusive, ex-cop father. When Jon and Ray form a tight friendship, they find in each other everything they lack at home, but it's not until Ray falls in love with beautiful, headstrong Karen...

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 contains twenty unforgettable stories selected from hundreds of literary magazines. The winning tales take place in such far-flung locales as Madagascar, Nantucket, a Midwestern meth lab, Antarctica, and a post-apocalyptic England, and feature a fascinating array of characters: aging jazzmen, avalanche researchers, a South African wild child, and a mute actor in silent films. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.