Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.

    Some stories have won awards; some have been included in various 'Year's Best' anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken's personal favorites. Many of the authors collected here (with the obvious exception of Liu Cixin) belong to the younger generation of 'rising stars'.In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore Chinese science fiction. Liu Cixin's essay, The Worst of All Possible Universes and The Best of All Possible Earths, gives a historical overview of SF in China and situates his own rise to prominence as the premier Chinese author within that context. Chen Qiufan's The Torn Generation gives the view of a younger generation of authors trying to come to terms with the tumultuous transformations around them. Finally, Xia Jia, who holds the first Ph.D. issued for the study of Chinese SF, asks What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?.

    . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . . . In the fifteen stories collected here—including "Blow-Up," which was the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni's film of the same name—Julio Cortazar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious, perhaps even the terrible.Axolotl House taken over Distances Idol of the Cyclades Letter to a young lady in Paris Yellow flower Continuity of parks Night face up Bestiary Gates of heaven Blow-up End of the game At your service Pursuer Secret weapons.

    Seven of her finest are reprinted here.Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women — and how they might be improved.The yellow wallpaper Three Thanksgivings The cottagette Turned Making a change If I were a man Mr. Peebles' heart.

    There's Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build "the thing without a name." There's Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big Foot, the bully with glass tear ducts. There's the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.Set during World War II and narrated by an unnamed-but precociously observant-neighborhood boy, Miguel Street is a work of mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy and anarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page.

      Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.   With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.Lulu --Hotline girl --New fruit --Field notes on a marriage --Flying machine --On the street where you live --Shanghai murmur --Land of big numbers --Beautiful country --Gubeikou spirit

    The magazine published twenty stories by this stellar group of writers over the course of the summer. They are now collected for the first time in one volume.The range of voices is extraordinary. There is the lyrical realism of Nell Freudenberger, Philipp Meyer, C. E. Morgan, and Salvatore Scibona; the satirical comedy of Joshua Ferris and Gary Shteyngart; and the genre-bending tales of Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Téa Obreht. David Bezmozgis and Dinaw Mengestu offer clear eyed portraits of immigration and identity; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, ZZ Packer, and Wells Tower offer voice-driven, idiosyncratic narratives. Then there are the haunting sociopolitical stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Daniel Alarcón, and Yiyun Li, and the metaphysical fantasies of Chris Adrian, Rivka Galchen, and Karen Russell.Each of these writers reminds us why we read. And each is aiming for greatness: fighting to get and to hold our attention in a culture that is flooded with words, sounds, and pictures; fighting to surprise, to entertain, to teach, and to move not only us but generations of readers to come. A landmark collection, 20 Under 40 stands as a testament to the vitality of fiction today.Birdsong / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie --The warm fuzzies / Chris Adrian --Second Lives / Daniel Alarcón --The train of their departure / David Bezmozgis --The Erlking / Sarah Shun-lien Bynum --The pilot / Joshua Ferris --Here we aren't, so quickly / Jonathan Safran Foer --An arranged marriage / Nell Freudenberger --The entire northern side was covered with fire / Rivka Galchen --The young painters / Nicole Krauss --The science of flight / Yiyun Li --An honest exit / Dinaw Mengestu --What you do out here, when you're alone / Philipp Meyer --Twins / C.E. Morgan --Blue water djinn / Téa Obreht --Dayward / ZZ Packer --The dredgeman's revelation / Karen Russell --The kid / Salvatore Scibona --Lenny hearts Eunice / Gary Shteyngart --The landlord / Wells Tower

    In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.

    In “The View from Castle Rock,” the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictional account of her Scottish ancestors’ emigration to Canada in 1818. Nathan Englander’s cast of young characters in “How We Avenged the Blums” confronts a bully dubbed “The Anti-Semite” to both comic and tragic ends. In “Refresh, Refresh,” Benjamin Percy gives a forceful, heart-wrenching look at a young man’s choices when his father -- along with most of the men in his small town -- is deployed to Iraq. Yiyun Li’s “After a Life” reveals secrets, hidden shame, and cultural change in modern China. And in “Tatooizm,” Kevin Moffett weaves a story full of humor and humanity about a young couple’s relationship that has run its course.Ann Patchett “brought unprecedented enthusiasm and judiciousness [to The Best American Short Stories 2006],” writes Katrina Kenison in her foreword, “and she is, surely, every story writer’s ideal reader, eager to love, slow to fault, exquisitely attentive to the text and all that lies beneath it.”

    Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon."In a Grove" is an early modernist short story consisting of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.The story is often praised as being among the greatest in Japanese literature.

    In these seven stories, the author of The Makioka Sisters explores the territory where love becomes self-annihilation, where the contemplation of beauty gives way to fetishism, and where tradition becomes an instrument of refined cruelty.

    For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.This year's Best American Short Stories features a rich mix of voices, from both intriguing new writers and established masters of the form like Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Ford, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Arthur Miller. The 2002 collection includes stories about everything from illicit love affairs to family, the immigrant experience and badly behaved children -- stories varied in subject but unified in their power and humanity. In the words of this year's guest editor, the best-selling author Sue Miller, "The American short story today [is] healthy and strong . . . These stories arrived in the nick of time . . . to teach me once more what we read fiction for."Foreword --Introduction / Sue Miller --Along the frontage road / Michael Chabon --The sugar-tit / Carolyn Cooke --The red ant house / Ann Cummins --Seven / Edwidge Danticat --A house on the plains / E.L. Doctorow --Puppy / Richard Ford --The heifer / Melissa Hardy --Zilkowski's theorem / Karl Iagnemma --Nobody's business / Jhumpa Lahiri --Digging / Beth Lordan --In case we're separated / Alice Mattison --Billy goats / Jill McCorkle --Watermelon days / Tom McNeal --Nachman from Los Angeles / Leonard Michaels --Bulldog / Arthur Miller --The rug / Meg Mullins --Family furnishings / Alice Munro --Surrounded by sleep / Akhil Sharma --Love and hydrogen / Jim Shepard --Aftermath / Mary Yukari Waters --Contributor's notes --100 other distinguished stories of 2001 --Editorial addresses of American and Canadian magazines publishing short stories

    In 1962, 'The Fine White Mist of Winter, ' composed when the author was 19 years old, appeared in The Literary Review and was selected for both the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories of that year.By the north gate: Edge of the world ; The fine white mist of winter --Upon the sweeping flood, 1966: First views of the enemy ; At the seminary ; What death with love should have to do ; Upon the sweeping flood --The wheel of love: In the region of ice ; Where are you going, where have you been? ; Unmailed, unwritten letters ; Accomplished desires ; How I contemplated the world from the Detroit House of Correction and began my life over again ; Four summers --Marriages and infidelities: Love and death ; By the river ; Did you ever slip on red blood? ; The lady with the pet dog ; The turn of the screw ; The dead --The goddess and other women: Concerning the case of Bobby T. ; In the warehouse ; Small avalanches --Night-side: The widows ; The translation ; Bloodstains ; Daisy --Uncollected: The molesters ; Silkie.

    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 Best American Short Stories 2012 includesThe last speaker of the language / Carol Anshaw --Pilgrim life / Taylor Antrim --What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank / Nathan Englander --The other place / Mary Gaitskill --North Country / Roxane Gay --Paramour / Jennifer Haigh --Navigators / Mike Meginnis --Miracle polish / Steven Millhauser --Axis / Alice Munro --Volcano / Lawrence Osborne --Diem Perdidi / Julie Otsuka --Honeydew / Edith Pearlman --Occupational hazard / Angela Pneuman --Beautiful monsters / Eric Puchner --Tenth of December / George Saunders --The sex lives of African girls / Taiye Selasi --Alive / Sharon Solwitz --M&M world / Kate Walbert --Anything helps / Jess Walter --What's important is feeling / Adam Wilson

    Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they encompass both past and present as they negotiate the complex territory of ambition, failure, achievement, and shattered dreams. In "Ship Fever," the title novella, a young Canadian doctor finds himself at the center of one of history's most tragic epidemics. In "The English Pupil," Linnaeus, in old age, watches as the world he organized within his head slowly drifts beyond his reach. And in "The Littoral Zone," two marine biologists wonder whether their life-altering affair finally was worth it. In the tradition of Alice Munro and William Trevor, these exquisitely rendered fictions encompass whole lives in a brief space. As they move between interior and exterior journeys, "science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material" (Boston Globe).