Editions

The Start of Something

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9781784702854

  • Length: 352  Pages

  • Dimensions: 200mm x 22mm x 134mm

  • Weight: 290g

  • RRP: £9.99

The Start of Something

  • The Selected Stories of Stuart Dybek

'One of the most soulful writers in America, and a national treasure' George Saunders

Nineteen tales of growing up, wising up, and falling in love, spanning more than three decades of prize-winning work by a North American master of the short story

The Start of Something is a visionary work following the lovelorn beatniks, hard-boiled gangsters and jaded academics of America, journeying through a haze of drugs, dreams and lucid memory. Seductive and freewheeling, each story glittering with the found poetry of the street, this is the definitive introduction to a life’s work by a writer who has re-enchanted short fiction with every new collection.

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9781784702854

  • Length: 352  Pages

  • Dimensions: 200mm x 22mm x 134mm

  • Weight: 290g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • One of the most soulful writers in America, and a national treasure

    George Saunders

  • A poet of the short story, Stuart Dybek is a strange and exceptional talent… Impressive.

    Phil Baker, Sunday Times

  • [Dybek’s stories] are strikingly with-it, distinctly 21st century in their shape and method… Dybek has also always stirred understated, powerfully realized and ravishingly beautiful images almost casually into his work.

    Kate Clanchy, Guardian

  • [The Start of Something is] worth leaping on.

    Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

  • A great deal of the art of the short story is to do with exits and entrances… [Dybek] has a knack for getting both things right… Dybek is – and this he certainly has in common with Ishiguro – a writer doing completely his own thing.

    Sam Leith, Financial Times

About the Author

Stuart Dybek

Described by the Atlantic as 'one of America's living masters of the short story', Stuart Dybek has been accoladed on all fronts, receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, a PEN/Malamud Prize, a Lannan Award, a Whiting Writers Award, and four O. Henry Prizes. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared widely in journals such as Harper’s, Poetry, Tin House, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker.

Stuart Dybek

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.