Island: Collected Stories

The collected stories by one of the greatest short-story writers in the world.These slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces- apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child.Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss.As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword- 'the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness. The stories stand securely outside of fashion while reflecting deep change'. Bringing together all Alistair MacLeod's short fiction, and including two previously uncollected stories, Island represents the great achievement of one of the world's finest storytellers.

“A lifetime's achievement in more than one sense”

"" Sunday Times "Startling in their simple perfection" Sunday Tribune "Provokingly singular and rare, an island of richness" Guardian "Beautifully crafted stories: elegiac, honest, proud, and both eloquent and taciturn, like their subjects...a wonderfully talented writer" Margaret Atwood "Rarely does a great writer offer himself to us with an oeuvre so complete" New York Times Book Review

Alistair MacLeod was born in 1936 and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Windsor, Ontario.

Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, these stories are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart. Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, they celebrate a passionate engagment with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition - in the face of love and loss.

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