The Complete Stories

About this book

Winner of the National Book Award The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery OConnors monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections OConnor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. OConnor published her first story "The Geranium " in 1946 while she was working on her masters degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically this collection shows that her last story "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death?is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together these stories reveal a lively penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by OConnors longtime editor and friend Robert Giroux.