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THIRST
by Ken Kalfus
Originally published in 1998 and now a classic, Thirst heralded the arrival of Ken Kalfus, one of the most inventive, playful, and finely-tuned craftsman the short form has seen.
These stories mine a vast terrain of geography and metaphor—sketching portraits of people caught in the seismic collision of cultures, be they real, hallucinated, dreamed, or desired. With his inimitable combination of the "comic, surreal, and nostalgic" (Sunday Oregonian), Kalfus is one of America's great contemporary writers, and this collection is a major work of lasting significance.
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 “Thirst is a book to give to people who piss and moan about the unpromising future of American fiction.” —David Foster Wallace
“Kalfus's stories are genuinely magical, that is, the transformations they work are real, not illusions. Thirst is a collection steeped in wonder.”
—Stuart Dybek
“Kalfus reminds us that the short story is not an easily contained form, a single thing done in a single way.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Kalfus unerringly recognizes the comedy inherent in our quandries of knowing and being, and suggests that laughter best quenches existential thirst.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
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Get to Know the Author
Ken Kalfus is the author of two novels,The Commissariat of Enlightenment and A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, which was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award. He is also the author of two collections of stories,Thirst—a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Salon Book Award—and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies—a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and winner of a Pushcart Prize. A film adaptation of his short story, "Pu-239," aired on HBO in 2007. Kalfus recently received a Pew Fellowships in the Arts award and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A writer for Harper's and the New York Times, Ken is the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and lives in Philadelphia with his family.
Visit www.kenkalfus.com
Read an excerpt from Thirst
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