Dusk & Other Stories

James Salter is an author with an impassioned following among contemporary readers, writers, and critics, and Dusk and Other Stories is among his signal achievements. First published nearly a quarter-century ago, and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital—each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace.

These stories chart the myriad moments and details that, taken together, shape a fate. Two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy. A divorced woman learns that she is about to lose the last thing of real value to her. An ambitious young screenwriter unexpectedly discovers the true meaning of art and glory. A rider, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific accident—night is falling, and she must face her destiny alone.

Each of these stories is told with weighted calm, with a lingering mixture of precision and sudden revelation. They confirm James Salter as one of the finest writers of our time. 

Dusk and Other Stones is James Salter's only short-story collection. Virtuosic and exquisitely compressed, these stories snow Salter at his best. The collection received the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award.

Now available in paperback, the long-awaited first collection of short stories by the author of A Sport and a Pastime.

James Salter is the author of the novels Solo Faces, Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, The Arm of Flesh (revised as Cassada), and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; and the collection, Dusk and Other Stories which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in Colorado and on Long Island.

 

Philip Gourevitch is the author of We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, A Cold Case, and The Ballad of Abu Ghraib. He has served as editor of The Paris Review and is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker.