In this new volume -- one that surely will become a companion volume to the short-story collection -- Richard Ford brings together ten of the finest American examples of a much less well-known and indeterminate literary, otherwise known as the novella.
Ford has selected at least one long story from each decade since the forties and has included examples by such well-known literary figures as Phillip Roth, Jane Smiley, and Eudora Welty, among others. He has also included a story by the young writer Edwidge Danticat, named one of America's best young novelists by Granta magazine.
Ford has written a long introduction explaining why he calls these long stories rather than novellas; this introduction will almost certainly be used in the classroom.
To our knowledge, this is the only large collection of novellas available in the English language.
The timespan for the selection of the novellas begins with 1940 and runs to the present.
