Book Description

Sixteen new stories and fifteen classics by the National Book Award–winning, New York Times–bestselling author of War Dances. Sherman Alexie’s stature as a writer of stories, poetry, and novels has soared over the course of his twenty-book, twenty-year career. His wide-ranging, acclaimed fiction throughout the last two decades—from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to his most recent PEN/Faulkner Award–winning War Dances—have established him as a star in contemporary American literature. A bold and irreverent observer of life among Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, the daring, versatile, funny, and outrageous Alexie showcases his many talents in Blasphemy, where he unites fifteen beloved classics with sixteen new stories in one sweeping anthology for devoted fans and first-time readers. Included here are some of his most esteemed tales, including “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” in which a homeless Indian man quests to win back a family heirloom; “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” a road-trip morality tale; “The Toughest Indian in the World,” about a night shared between a writer and a hitchhiker; and his most recent, “War Dances,” about a man grappling with sudden hearing loss in the wake of his father’s death. Alexie’s new stories are fresh and quintessential, about donkey basketball leagues, lethal wind turbines, a twenty-four-hour Asian manicure salon, good and bad marriages, and all species of warriors in America today. An indispensable Alexie collection, Blasphemy reminds us, on every thrilling page, why Alexie is one of our greatest contemporary writers and a true master of the short story. Praise for Blasphemy “Alexie once again reasserts himself as one the most compelling contemporary practitioners of the short story. In Blasphemy, the author demonstrates his talent on nearly every page. . . . [Alexie] illuminates the lives of his characters in unique, surprising, and, ultimately, hopeful ways.” —Boston Globe “Alexie writes with arresting perception in praise of marriage, in mockery of hypocrisy, and with concern for endangered truths and imperiled nature. He is mischievously and mordantly funny, scathingly forthright, deeply and universally compassionate, and wholly magnetizing. This is a must-have collection.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) “[A] sterling collection of short stories by Alexie, a master of the form. . . . The newer pieces are full of surprises. . . . These pieces show Alexie at his best: as an interpreter and observer, always funny if sometimes angry, and someone, as a cop says of one of his characters, who doesn’t “fit the profile of the neighborhood.”“—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)