Keath Fraser

“If you really want to journey into the heart of darkness, you'd be advised to travel with Vancouver writer Keath Fraser, a man of extraordinary talents.” —Bronwyn Drainie An icon of Canadian short fiction, Keath Fraser has exerted a wide and trenchant influence since the publication of his first collection Taking Cover in 1982. Damages: Selected Stories 1982–2012 gathers the finest of his work across decades. Combining the craftsmanship of the form’s greatest masters with the idiosyncratic voices and music of our contemporary moment, the stories selected here travel from the richly peopled worlds of Fraser’s Vancouver to the Gulf of Thailand, a Phnom Penh bone-house embassy, and the Rajasthan desert, and demonstrate remarkable diversity of character and effortless storytelling across a range of modes. Featuring an introduction by John Metcalf, and including the novella “Foreign Affairs,” called by the Oxford Companion of Canadian Literature “one of the masterpieces of Canadian short fiction,” Damages showcases Keath Fraser as one of the best and most enduring story writers of the last fifty years.

Denise’s stepdaughter Greta is a med student who swims ocean marathons and runs off to Africa with a family friend four times her age—and also battles an eating disorder. When Judy, Greta’s birth mother, returns from Japan (to which she ran off herself, with a Mexican tennis pro) and tries to ingratiate herself with the husband and daughter she left, Denise must navigate their complicated relationships with each other while attempting to bring Greta’s addiction to light—and learning how to live more charitably.