A House Is a Body: Stories

About this book

A Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from The Millions Bustle BuzzFeed Electric Literature Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Swamys A House Is a Body will not simply be talked about as one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s; it will change the way all storiesshort and longare told written and consumed. There is nothing no emotion no tiny morsel of memory no touch that this book does not take seriously. Yet A House Is a Body might be the most fun Ive ever had in a short story collection. Kiese Laymon author of Heavy Dreams collide with reality modernity with antiquity and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. In Earthly Pleasures a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of Indias biggest celebrities and desire and ego are laid bare. In A Simple Composition a husbands professional crisis leads to his wifes discovery of a dark ecstatic joy. And in the title story an exhausted mother watches hypnotized by fear as a California wildfire approaches her home. Immersive and assured provocative and probing these are stories written with the edge and precision of a knife blade. Set in the United States and India they reveal small but intense moments of beauty pain and power that contain the world. A House Is a Body introduces a bold and original voice in fiction from a writer at the start of a stellar career.