This Is Salvaged Stories

Vauhini Vara

eBook - 2023

Winner of the High Plains Book Award for Short Stories Longlisted for The Story Prize Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice In Literature Award A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 • A New York Public Library Best Book of 2023 • The Frontlist, Adam Morgan's Substack, Favorite Book of 2023 • A Publishers Weekly Best Fiction of 2023 • Named a Best Book of Fall 2023 by Bustle Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbor, or lover, and the relationships between self and others. A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A c...ompetitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist... more