Kirjahaku

A posthumous and definitive collection of new and selected stories by "virtuoso of the short story" (Esquire) and National Book Award finalist Thom Jones. This scorching collection from award-winning author Thom Jones features his best new short fiction alongside a selection of outstanding stories from three previous books. Jones's stories are full of high-octane, prose-drunk entertainment. His characters are grifters and drifters, rogues and ne'er-do-wells, would-be do-gooders whose human frailties usually get the better of them. Some are lovable, others are not, but each has an indelible and irresistible voice. They include Vietnam soldiers, amateur boxers, devoted doctors, strung-out advertising writers, pill poppers and veterans of the psych ward, and an unforgettable adolescent DJ radio host, among others. The stories here are excursions into a unique world that veers between abject desperation and fleeting transcendence. Perhaps no other writer in recent memory could encapsulate in such short spaces the profound and the devastating, the poignant and the hallucinatory, with such an exquisite balance of darkness and light. Jones's fiction reveals again and again the resilience and grace of characters who refuse to succumb. In stories that can at once delight us with their wicked humor and sting us with their affecting pathos, Night Train perfectly captures the essence of this iconic American master, showcasing in a single collection the breadth of power of his inimitable fiction.

Thom Jones' world encompasses dilapidated fight arenas, state mental hospitals, and chaotic emergency rooms. The inhabitants are his brilliantly etched characters, who battle desperately against fate in a game of life they cannot win but dare not lose. Now, with Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine, Jones serves up a dozen powerful stories that teeter between wicked humor and stinging pathos. In "Fields of Purple Forever," a Vietnam vet swims alone across the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Bosporus to maintain "the edge" that kept him alive in wartime - and which is all he now has left. "You Cheated, You Lied" tells the deranged love story of two unstable people abandoning their lives and medications to live together in a shack on a Honolulu beach - with disastrous results. And in the title story, a young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows the world of boxing shields and protects him from the even crueler world outside the ring.

An acclaimed, award-winning collection of stories moves from the combat zones of Vietnam, and their personal consequences, to a suburban home afflicted by cancer, to hallucinations in Bombay, and to other combat zones. Reprint. QPB Alt. NYT.

Thom Jones's magnificent collection of stories presents a brutal and authentic vision of the human condition, in a world without mercy or redemption. The Pugilist at Rest gives us an America of Vietnam vets and ex-boxers, of bitter lovers in trailer parks, of lives passing in brilliant epileptic flickers. These ferocious, semi-autobiographical stories form the debut collection by a distinctive and hugely talented writer. Thom Jones was discovered as a writer relatively late in life, in his forties, by the fiction editors at the New Yorker, who published many of Jones's stories from the early 1990s onwards. The title story of this collection went on to win the O. Henry Award for Best Short Story.

'Jones was a master of the short story [and] Night Train will be an amazing discovery for anyone who cares about literature.' Philipp Meyer, New York Times bestselling author of The SonA posthumous and definitive collection of new and selected stories by short-fiction icon and National Book Award finalist Thom Jones, with a stunning introduction by Amy BloomThom Jones's stories are high-octane, prose-drunk entertainment. His characters are grifters and drifters, rogues and ne'er-do-wells - some lovable, some not - but each with a voice that never fails to grab you by the collar. They include Vietnam soldiers, amateur boxers, psych ward veterans and an unforgettable adolescent DJ radio host, among others.Perfectly capturing the essence of this icon of the American short story, Night Train showcases the sheer breadth and power of his inimitable stories.'Bleakly and outrageously comic . . . Reading Thom Jones's fiction is like speeding in an open car: the landscape blurs, the momentum becomes intoxicating -- and then the brakes are applied, with no warning.' Joyce Carol Oates

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. He met Liston's gaze but found it almost impossible to sustain eye contact. Soon it became an exercise in the control of fear. Sonny Liston gave Kid Dynamite the slightest hint of a smile and winked.In the build-up to a fight, Kid Dynamite's head swirls - with thoughts of his estranged father, his difficult relationship with his stepfather, the time he met his hero, and the sense that his own life is reaching a moment of change. A masterclass in tone, atmosphere and control, 'Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine' pays testimony to Thom Jones's unique talent for the short-story form.Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.