Small Worlds

 Expansive Stories On Small Canvases
 

Small Worlds is a collection of flash and microfiction that traverses continents and cultures, and captures the messy, often absurd architecture of human lives, compressed into moments of sharp beauty, sly humor, and unsettling truth.  In twenty-five stories--set in Los Angeles and London, Chicago and Goa, the Australian Outback and beyond--Gail Vida Hamburg distills the breadth of human experience into moments of clarity about love and loss, migration and memory, resilience and reinvention.  

From slow dances that never end, to customer service calls that turn into romances, to rebellious seniors plotting a great escape, these stories chronicle the intimate and the epic in miniature. Here, love is both a balm and a weapon. Loneliness births imaginary friends. Deviants justify cruelty with high-minded philosophy. And in the end, everyone is seeking—connection, redemption, or simply a way out.  

With razor-sharp wit and unsparing insight, Small Worlds invites readers to peer into the condensed universes we each inhabit—worlds where longing, compulsion, invention, and self-rationale collide.  

What's the sum of a life? A moment. A sentence. A breath.  

This story cycle is a meditation on the art of compression and the expansive truths that reside in the smallest spaces.
 

Stories as Mughal Miniature Art and Rice Grain Paintings