Victory Over Japan

Ellen Gilchrist

Jan 2014 · Diversion Books

About this ebook

Originally published in 1984, this collection of 14 short stories set in Arkansas and Mississippi went on to win that year’s National Book Award for fiction, confirming Ellen Gilchrist’s place as one of the preeminent literary talents of her generation. Victory Over Japan takes us into the lives of an unforgettable group of Southern women — beautiful, complicated, enchanting, and sometimes dangerous — in and out of bars, marriages, divorces, lovers' arms, and even earthquakes, in an attempt to find happiness, or at least some satisfaction. Throughout these stories, one hears echoes of Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, but Ms. Gilchrist has her own unique literary voice, and it is outrageously funny, moving, tragic, and always appealing.

PRAISE:
“To say that Ellen Gilchrist can write is to say that Placido Domingo can sing. All you need to do is listen.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

“She is what they call a natural, writing with passion, authority and a noticeable lack of the self-consciousness that weighs down much of contemporary fiction.” —San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

“Ellen Gilchrist’s achievement is to create lives which refuse to be bound on the page by words and sentences . . . the writing is full of understanding that doesn’t advertise itself as perception or insight.” —London Daily Telegraph

About the author

Ellen Gilchrist is the award-winning author of more than 20 books, including novels, short story collections, essays and poetry. Her new collection of stories, Acts of God, will be published in April 2014 by Algonquin, along with the paperback release of her novel A Dangerous Age. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and teaches creative writing and contemporary fiction at the University of Arkansas.