'Sometimes - not often - a book comes along that feels like Christmas. Philip Hensher's timely, but timeless, selection of the best short stories from the past 20 years is that kind of book. His introduction is as enriching as anything that has been published this year' Sunday Times
A spectacular treasury of the best British short stories published in the last twenty years
We are living in a particularly rich period for British short stories. Despite the relative lack of places in which they can be published, the challenge the medium represents has attracted a host of remarkable, subversive, entertaining and innovative writers. Philip Hensher, following the success of his definitive Penguin Book of British Short Stories, has scoured a vast trove of material and chosen thirty great stories for this new volume of works written between 1997 and the present day.
Imprint: Penguin
Published: 04/10/2018
ISBN: 9780241307168
Length: 432 Pages
RRP: £9.99
A bold anthology ... alive with provocations and insights
Hensher's anthology is bigger, better and broader in several senses than anything else currently available
Almost 100 potent doses of the form which editor Philip Hensher claims very plausibly to be "the richest, most varied and most historically extensive national tradition anywhere in the world"... Hensher has spent a couple of years searching libraries and magazine archives and comes out staggering under a weight of treasures
Like one of the legion of cantankerous, eccentric hosts we meet across this generous terrain, Hensher knows how to lay a grand spread...so enjoy the feast
Anyone reading this collection just for pleasure should start at the end of the second volume and work backwards...it would quickly bring you to four outstanding stories by women...each of these, though quickly over, leaves a lasting mark in the mind