Stories of Happy People

What is happiness in an age of packaged needs and liberated desires? Lars Gustafsson’s Stories of Happy People is a collection of ten short fictions that maps the range of contentment, from inner joy to the edges of despair. “Uncle Sven and the Cultural Revolution” finds a politically indifferent Swedish research engineer, in Mao’s China as an industrial consultant, surprised by his own imagination. “The Four Railroads of Iserlohn” lead to poignant, illusionary journeyings. The half-felt ye...