A House Is a Body: Stories
(eBook)

Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

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    [year] => 2020
    [artist] => Shruti Swamy
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    [titleId] => 15217639
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    [language] => ENGLISH
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    [title] => A House Is a Body
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    [synopsis] => 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



"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. Set in the United States and India, Swamy's characters grapple with motherhood, relationships, and their bodies to reveal small but intense internal moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.



 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.



A House Is a Body introduces a bold and original voice in fiction, from a writer at the start of a stellar career.



 Don't miss Shruti Swamy's debut novel, The Archer (available September 7, 2021), which has already been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Shruti Swamy is the author of the story collection A House Is a Body, which was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and was longlisted for the Story Prize. Her work has been published by the Paris Review and McSweeney's and anthologized in the O. Henry Prize Stories. Her debut novel, The Archer, was published by Algonquin Books in September 2021 and has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She lives in San Francisco. An Electric Lit Favorite Short Story Collection of 2020



"A House Is A Body might be the most fun I've ever had in a short story collection."

 -Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy



 "Stunning."

 -Ms.



 "Swamy's debut short story collection is rich, mesmeric . . . These are nuanced and quietly powerful stories about our most urgent and deeply felt experiences-grief, love, and desire."

 -BuzzFeed (29 Summer Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down)



 "Equal parts elegance and sorrow, absurdity and sensuality. This book is magic."

 -C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold



 "Swamy connects the narratives through her clean prose, punctuating moments both surreal and eerily realistic."

 -Time ("Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in August")



 "In this story collection that hops back and forth between India and the U.S., Shruti Swamy delivers a meticulous investigation of the pleasures, pains, and confusions that bodies afford-especially when those bodies belong to people of color. In the hypnotic, almost Lynchian title story (which previously appeared in The Paris Review), a Californian woman watches as a wildfire steadily advances on her home. These are closely observed stories that often turn into provocative studies about the absurdity of our entanglement with others."

 -The Millions



 "Two-time O. Henry Award winner Shruti Swamy shows impressive range within the deceptively narrow confines (200 pages) of her debut short story collection, A House Is A Body . . . Swamy's words readily dazzle, and the collection's themes, including a haunting expl
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15217639
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    [subtitle] => Stories
    [publisher] => Little, Brown and Company
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