Book excerpt: 'The best short story writer in the world' Susan Hill 'This book is a spectacular literary revelation' Sunday Times The collected stories of an award-winning, modern classic American writer who has been compared to Alice Munro, John Updike – and even Anton Chekhov Tenderly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captured life on the page like no one else. Spanning forty years of writing, moving from tsarist Russia to the coast of Maine, from Jerusalem to Massachusetts, these astonishing stories reveal one of America's greatest modern writers. Across a stunning array of scenes-an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, an old woman's deathbed confession of her mother's affair-Edith Pearlman crafts a timeless and unique sensibility, shot through with wit, lucidity and compassion. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe Edith Pearlman (1936–2023) published her debut collection of stories in 1996, aged 60. She won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Binocular Vision. She published over 250 works of short fiction in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and online publications. Her work won three O. Henry Prizes, the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, and a Mary McCarthy Prize, among others. In 2011, Pearlman was the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, which put her in the ranks of luminaries like John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates.