An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life

Oscillating between elation and despair, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is the debut short story collection from Sunday Times Short Story Award finalist Paul Dalla Rosa.


'Exciting . . . thrilling, exhilarating' - Christos Tsiolkas, author of Seven and a Half


'Hilarious, brutal, warm and tender' - Abigail Ulman, author of Hot Little Hands


'A knockout.' - Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else


'How can these stories be so funny, dazzling, deep and dark?' - Ronnie Scott, author of The Adversary 


Whether working in food service or in high-end retail, lit by a laptop in a sex chat or by the camera of an acclaimed film director, sharing a dangerous apartment in the city, a rooming house in China or a vacation rental in Mallorca, the protagonists of the ten stories comprising Paul Dalla Rosa's debut collection, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, navigate the spaces between aspiration and delusion, ambition and aimlessness, the curated profile and the unreliable body.


By turns unsparing and tender, Dalla Rosa explores our lives in late-stage capitalism, where globalisation and its false promises of connectivity and equity leave us all further alienated and disenfranchised. His stories are small masterpieces of regret, futility and tenderness, dripping with acuity, irony and wit.


Like his acclaimed contemporary Ottessa Moshfegh and the legendary Lucia Berlin, Dalla Rosa is a masterful observer and unflinching eviscerator of our ugly, beautiful attempts at finding meaning in an ugly, beautiful world.