From the bestselling author of Martin Dressler comes a new collection of short stories that explore the magnificent obsessions of the unfettered imagination, as well as the darker, subterranean currents that fuel them.
With the panache of an old-fashioned magician, Steven Millhauser conducts his readers from the dark corners beneath the sunlit world to a balloonist's tour of the heavens. He transforms department stores and amusement parks into alternate universes of infinite plentitude and menace. He unveils the secrets of a maker of automatons and a coven of teenage girls. And on every page of The Knife Thrower and Other Stories, Millhauser confirms his stature as a narrative enchanter in the tradition of Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges.
Steven Millhauser is the author of numerous works of fiction, including Martin Dressler, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, and, most recently, Dangerous Laughter, a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year. His work has been translated into fifteen languages, and his story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” was the basis of the 2006 film The Illusionist. He teaches at Skidmore College and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Praise
Praise
"Tantalizing new stories.... Millhauser's ingenuity is delicious." —A. S. Byatt, The Washington Post Book World
"An American writer of surpassing skill.... [Millhauser] renders the impossible itself with precision." —Chicago Tribune
"As Gothic as Poe and as imaginative as Fantasia, Millhauser's deceptive fables are funny and warm. But they're dark as dungeons, too.... He bewitches you." —Entertainment Weekly