American Estrangement

Said Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as "a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain." His new collection of storiessome of which have appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Best American Short Storiesis set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to readers of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal strugglesa sons fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addictioneven as they are battered by larger, often invisible, economic, political, and racial forces of American society. Searing, intimate, often slyly funny, and always marked by a deep imaginative sympathy, American Estrangement is a testament to our addled times. It will cement Sayrafiezadehs reputation as one of the essential twenty-first-century American writers.