The King Is Dead
Stories
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- 29,00 kr
Publisher Description
For the first time ever, a complete collection of short fiction the New York Times bestselling author of The Queen's Gambit
Walter Tevis is widely regarded as a master for both his gritty poolhall novels and his brilliant rendering of the world of competitive chess. This long overdue collection establishes Tevis's rightful place as a maestro of the short form, as well. Bringing together the 1981 short story collection Far From Home with a host of other previously unpublished stories from journals and magazines, this entertaining collection showcases Tevis's characteristic perceptiveness, empathy, and range.
In one story, a man receives a phone call from his future self and follows their instructions to unpreditcable, calamitous results. In another, a famous actor and a young actress showcase their talent for acting both on and off the stage. Here also are five short stories set in poolhalls, including one that features Fast Eddie Felson and another that was the basis for the novel The Hustler. Here also is his first fictional foray into chess, with a ranked chess player finding fellowship in the prison yard with another player.
In all of them, Tevis reminds again and again why his writing has long been revered for its roving curiosity and innate humanity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This visionary and unsettling collection from Tevis (The Queen's Gambit), who died in 1984, features the dystopian science fiction and tales of pool hall hustlers known to the author's readers, and contains "outdated cultural representations and language," as acknowledged in a publisher's note. An Oedipal ickiness suffuses three transgressive linked stories, "A Visit from Mother," "Daddy," and "Sitting in Limbo," in which a man named Barney hosts the ghosts of his parents. In the poignant "The Apotheosis of Myra," a woman on the planet Belsin is murdered by her husband and comes back to life as the planet itself, speaking through the grass to exact her revenge. In "Echo," set in the 47th century, a man confronts his own self, resurrected from the 20th century, in a disturbing way. The sexualized female characters and misogyny of the protagonists, however, doesn't hold up as shock value, assuming it ever did ("Why didn't you shut her up? Why didn't you hit her in the face?" Barney says to his father, about his mother, in "Daddy" ). Tevis was a dynamic craftsman and often keen student of character, as demonstrated in these stories, though many readers will find these qualities difficult to appreciate given the context. This is for diehards only.
