Lorin Stein is the editor of The Paris Review and co-editor of Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story.He named five top contemporary short story collections for The Daily Beast.
One title on the list:
Last Evenings on EarthRead about another book on the list.
by Roberto Bolaño
More than any book of the last 10 years, this translated collection by the late Chilean Roberto Bolaño has changed the way Americans writeshort fiction. Often Bolaño’s narrators spend a whole story trying to figure out what the story is really about. Often they end up as confused as when they started. That doesn’t keep these stories from being funny, beautiful, or weirdly engrossing. The title piece, about a sensitive teenage poet on vacation with his macho dad, is up there (in my tiny private pantheon) with Hemingway’s “Indian Camp.”
Also see Rosamund Bartlett's five top books on Russian short stories.
--Marshal Zeringue
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