In eight stories, this singular collection of short fiction written over the course of ten years explores the terrain of modern urban life. In reflective, telegraphic prose, Susan Sontag confronts the reader with exposed workings of an impassioned intellect in narratives seamed with many of the themes of her essays--the nature of knowing, our relationship with the past, and the future in an alienated present. About the Author: Susan Sontag is the author of four novels, The Benefactor , Death Kit , The Volcano Lover and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; and five works of nonfiction, among them On Photography , which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for criticism, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors , and most recently, Where the Stress Falls . She lives in New York City. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.