In the Walled City: Stories

By Stewart O'Nan

Book Overview

An award-winning collection of short fiction from one of "the strongest American writers of his generation" (The Washington Post Book World).

Proclaimed "a master" by the New York Times and selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists, Stewart O'Nan started his literary career with this outstanding collection of short stories. Selected as the winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, these twelve stories offer intimate portraits of a broad range of characters--including a ruined farmer, a black day laborer, an old Chinese grocer, and a young policeman who descends into madness after being separated from his family.

Probing and lyrical, these stories illuminate the connections that bind us and the obligations and sorrows of love. From The Speed Queen to The Names of the Dead to West of Sunset, O'Nan has dazzled readers again and again. Fans new and old will enjoy In the Walled City.

"These are stories of a high order, sophisticated, humane, persistent; once read, they don't go away." --Tobias Wolff

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802138543
• ISBN13: 9780802138545
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Great stories that take a while to warm to

I absolutely loved O'Nan's "A Prayer for the Dying," so naturally I had to go back to his first book to see where he began. Although I managed to find a copy...The twelve stories included in this collection are interesting. O'Nan shows a talent for giving us the same story through different perspectives, and his language is beautiful at times, but the collection seems to be a mixed bag. The two stories that I would consider rather weak are "Mr. Wu Thinks" and "The Third of July." It seems in these two stories mainly that O'Nan gives us something but doesn't really lead it into a pleasing direction. I kept wishing these two stories would go somewhere interesting. Both do manage to give us a lot of insight into their characters, but the ten other stories in the collection are superb and do a much better job of delving into the darkness of the human spirit.I would actively search for this collection of stories. O'Nan almost had a perfect collection of stories on his hand, but even so, the vast majority of these stories are excellent and worth the purchase.