A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ΓÇó From the Booker PrizeΓÇôwinning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselvesΓÇöand our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD ΓÇó ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post,NPRTimeSan Francisco ChronicleEsquireMilwaukee Journal SentinelTown & CountryThe RumpusElectric LitThrillistBookPage ΓÇó ΓÇ£[A] worship song to writers and readers.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöOprah Daily For the last twenty yearsGeorge Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rainhe shares a version of that class with usoffering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by ChekhovTurgenevTolstoyand Gogolthe seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why itΓÇÖs more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introductionSaunders writesΓÇ£WeΓÇÖre going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the worldmade for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesnΓÇÖt fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of artΓÇönamelyto ask the big questionsquestions likeHow are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truthanywayand how might we recognize it?ΓÇ¥ He approaches the stories technically yet accessiblyand through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writingSaunders reminds usis a technical craftbut also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while readingand of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.