Steven Millhauser

In Steven Millhauser's new novel set in turn-of-the-century New York City, we watch young entrepreneur Martin Dressler like many of his day make the ascent from hotel bellhop to builder of hotels. . . . This mesmerizing novel brings us face to face with the ambiguity beneath the optimism of the American dream with a swiftness and intensity that are in themselves magnificently dreamlike.

"Here are eighteen stories of astonishing range and precision. A housewife drinks alone in her Connecticut living room. A guillotine glimmers above a sleepy town green. A pre-recorded customer service message sends a caller into a reverie of unspeakable yearning. With the deft touch and funhouse-mirror perspectives for which he has won countless admirers, Steven Millhauser gives us the towns, marriages, and families of a quintessential American lifestyle...

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler—a collection of stories in the tradition of Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges that explores the magnificent obsessions of the unfettered imagination, as well as the darker, subterranean currents that fuel them. • "Tantalizing new stories.... Millhauser's ingenuity is delicious." —A. S. Byatt, The Washington Post Book World

With...

A parody of a literary biography starring a 10-year-old novelist who is mysteriously dead at 11—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler.

As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius...

A master of literary transformation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler turns his attention to the transformations of love in these three hypnotic novellas. • “No one alive writes better about yearning and heartbreak…. Before such mastery, a reader can do nothing but bow his head.” —The Washington Post Book World

While ostensibly showing her home to a prospective buyer,...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler—hailed by The New Yorker as “a virtuoso of waking dreams”—comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession.
"Remarkable ... Not just brilliant but prescient." —The New York Times Book Review

In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes...