The Middleman and Other Stories

by Bharati Mukherjee

Overview

A newly reissued version Bharati's "stunning" (Los Angeles Times) stories, with a new introduction by award-winning author, Madhuri Vijay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802157577
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 5.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

BHARATI MUKHERJEE (1940-2017) is the author of over a dozen books, short-story collections, and works of nonfiction. In 1988 she became the first naturalized American citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle award for her collection The Middleman and Other Stories.

Editorial Reviews

"A consummated romance with the American language. . .a romance with America itself." -The New York Times Book Review

"Stunning. . .her characters stand on the shaky ground where East meets West and the sound of cultures clashing could shatter glass." -Los Angeles Times

[Mukherjee] zeroes in on uneasy terrain that no one has looked at with quite so clear an eye since approximately World War II." -Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

As evidenced in her first short story collection Darkness and two novels, The Tiger's Daughter and Wife, Mukherjee's central preoccupation is the problematical nature of personal encounters between East and West. These expertly crafted tales continue to have that focus; all turn on recent Third World immigrant experience in or closely affected by North America. Mukherjee makes the ambitious attempt to narrate through the voices of characters as diverse as a middle-class Italian-American suburbanite, a Sephardic mercenary from Smyrna by way of Flushing, Queens, a Trinidadian mother's helper and an Atlantan investment banker. But in striving for extended range she sometimes undercuts the authenticity and immediacy of her stories. The most successful tales are those told from the point of view of characters from the Indian subcontinent, especially women. It is Mukherjee's keen eye for telling and sensuous detail that make these stories rewarding. Her limpid prose has a capacity to surprise with trenchant wit and delight with finely calibrated lyricism. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly