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 Swamy's 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 stories--short and long--are 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 I've 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 India's biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare.
In A Simple Composition, a husband's professional crisis leads to his wife's 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.
Algonquin Books A house is a body: stories, paperback/shruti swamy
