Book excerpt: An arresting collection of contemporary fiction at its best, these stories explore a vast range of subjects, from love and deception to war and the insidious power of class distinctions. However clearly spoken, in voices sophisticated, cunning, or na•ve, here is fiction that consistently defies our expectations. Selected from thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines, the twenty prize-winning stories are accompanied by essays from each of the three eminent jurors on which stories they judged the best, and observations from all twenty prizewinners on what inspired them. “The Room” William Trevor “The Scent of Cinnamon” Charles Lambert “Cherubs” Justine Dymond “Galveston Bay, 1826” Eddie Chuculate “The Gift of Years” Vu Tran “The Diarist” Richard McCann “War Buddies” Joan Silber “Djamilla” Tony D’Souza “In a Bear’s Eye” Yannick Murphy “Summer, with Twins” Rebecca Curtis “Mudder Tongue” Brian Evenson “Companion” Sana Krasikov “A Stone House” Bay Anapol “The Company of Men” Jan Ellison “City Visit” Adam Haslett “The Duchess of Albany” Christine Schutt “A New Kind of Gravity” Andrew Foster Altschul “Gringos” Ariel Dorfman “El Ojo de Agua” Susan Straight “The View from Castle Rock” Alice Munro From the Trade Paperback edition.