Collected Stories

The first collection of the short stories of Harry Mark Petrakis was nominated for a National book Award in Fiction, establishing him as a master of the form. Revealing commentaries by the author introduce each story in this collection. In "The Passing of the Ice," Polish icemen suffer the fate of some great doomed Greek line. In "The Song of Rhodanthe" a fleeting vision of love flowers within a grim social prison. In "The journal of a Wife Beater" an insufferable chauvinist male discovers to his horror and bodily peril, that is wife is younger and stronger than he is.