Brad Watson

Astonishing prose brings to life a forgotten woman and a lost world in a strange and bittersweet Southern pastoral.

Miss Jane

A collection of stories explores every kind of domestic discord: unruly or distant children, alienated spouses, domestic abuse, loneliness, death, and divorce.

Stories

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

A posthumous collection of beloved and never-before-read stories from a titan of contemporary Southern fiction.

New and Selected Stories

There Is Happiness

“Zengin iç yaşamı sayesinde bedeninin kısıtlamalarını aşmayı bilen bir kadının çok iyi yazılmış portresi.” National Book Award Finalisti de olan Başka Dünyanın Kuşları’nda Brad Watson, yirminci yüzyıl başları Mississippi’sinin kırsal bir bölgesinde kadınların o zaman ve mekâna özgü yegâne “kullanım alanlarına”, yani seks ve evliliğe engel olacak genital bir bozuklukla doğmuş olan Bayan Jane Chisolm’un hayatını anlatıyor. Etrafını çevreleyen tabiatın o doğurgan dünyasından çiftlik yaşamının gerektirdiği zorlu işlere, onunla yakın dostluk kuran Doktor Thompson’dan, tüm sevgisine rağmen ondan ayrılmaya mecbur kalan delikanlıya varana dek, Bayan Jane Chisolm ve dünyasının kısırlık ya da çoraklıkla uzaktan yakından ilgisi yok. Tabiatın güzelliğini, onun yanı sıra da kudret ve aman vermezliğini eserlerinin alamet-i farikası olarak kullanan Watson, Başka Dünyanın Kuşları’nda ulaşılmaz aşkların hüznünü de taşıyan zor, romantizmden uzak ama yine de bünyesinde yüce bir güzelliği barındıran yakın bir geçmişe tekrar hayat veriyor. Sanıyoruz Tolstoy’un Anna Karenina’sı, Gustave Flaubert’in Emma Bovary’si, Harper Lee’nin Scout’u gibi, Brad Watson’ın Bayan Jane’ini de artık edebiyatın bu ölümsüz kadınlarının arasına ekleyebiliriz.

Başka Dünyanın Kuşları

Finding David

Having won and lost the woman he has loved since seeing her do a naked cartwheel in 1916, Finus Bates wonders if the colorful characters from their hometown hold the secrets to her elusive character. 22,500 first printing.

A Novel

The Heaven of Mercury

"His people and dogs—those wonderful dogs!—come alive with honest, thrumming energy." —The New York Times Book Review Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. In each of these "weird and wonderful stories" (Boston Globe), Brad Watson writes about people and dogs: dogs as companions, as accomplices, and as unwitting victims of human passions; and people responding to dogs as missing parts of themselves. "Elegant and elegiac, beautifully pitched to the human ear, yet resoundingly felt in our animal hearts" (New York Newsday), Watson's vibrant prose captures the animal crannies of the human personality—yearning for freedom, mourning the loss of something wild, drawn to human connection but also to thoughtless abandon and savagery without judgment. Pinckney Benedict praises Watson's writing as "crisp as a morning in deer season, rife with spirited good humor and high intelligence," and Fred Chappell calls his stories "strong and true to the place they come from." This powerful debut collection marks Brad Watson's introduction into "a distinguished [Southern] literary heritage, from Faulkner to Larry Brown to Barry Hannah to Richard Ford" (The State, Columbia, South Carolina).

Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Yukiko Motoya

Mathias Énard

Samanta Schweblin

Susanna Alakoski

Joanna Walsh

Lars Berge

Elin Cullhed

Åke Smedberg

Eivind Hofstad Evjemo

Dimitris Alevras

Ida Therén

Julia Stenroth

Rachel Shichor

I Granta #7 om service gör nya och etablerade författare en översyn av ett ord som väcker känslor och skapar debatt. Lars Berge ringer till bredbandssupporten och granskar servicesamhället, debutanten Julia Stenroth skildrar det monotona arbetet på en svinfarm och Dimitris Alevras berättar om en nybliven nattklubbschef omgiven av spritfläckar och minnen. Ida Therén ritar upp June Mansfield Millers liv och Susanna Alakoski beskriver sjukvårdsupplysningens tjänster. Åke Smedberg skriver om komplexa relationer i en trött småstad och så undersöker Elin Cullhed maktbalansen i ett familjehem. Ur internationella Granta kommer bland annat en berättelse om ett butiksbiträde som gör allt för sin kund, en novell om en dubbelarbetande mamma och en historia om dödshjälp. Svenska Granta är del av ett internationellt nätverk med engelskspråkiga Granta som nav. Tidskriften grundades av studenter i Cambridge i slutet av 1800-talet. År 1979 fick den sin nuvarande form som en arena för nyskriven skönlitteratur och litterära reportage. I dag finns Grantaredaktioner i ett tiotal länder världen över, från Kina till Brasilien. www.albertbonniersforlag.se/granta Twitter/Instagram: GrantaSweden

Granta #7 : Service

Longlisted for the National Book Award and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year "Gorgeous…A writer of profound emotional depths." —New York Times Book Review Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America. Drawing on the true story of his great-aunt, he explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that excludes her from the roles traditional for a woman of her time and place and frees her to live her life as she pleases. With irrepressible vitality and generosity of spirit, Miss Jane mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

'As unexpectedly beguiling as it is affecting.' Daily MailSince his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson's work has been as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America. Inspired by the true story of his own great-aunt, he explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that would stand in the way of the central "uses" for a woman in that time and place - namely, sex and marriage.From the country doctor who adopts Jane to the hard tactile labor of farm life, from the sensual and erotic world of nature around her to the boy who loved but was forced to leave her, the world of Miss Jane Chisolm is anything but barren. Free to satisfy only herself, she mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

Is It Lust Or Legalism?

Miss Jane: A Novel

Jonathan K. Dodson

A Guide to Forming Missional Communities

Called Together

Shortlisted for the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction: a dark, riotous Southern novel of sex, death, and transformation. Brad Watson's first novel has been eagerly awaited since his breathtaking, award-winning debut collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men. Here, he fulfills that literary promise with a humorous and jaundiced eye. Finus Bates has loved Birdie Wells since the day he saw her do a naked cartwheel in the woods in 1916. Later he won her at poker, lost her, then nearly won her again after the mysterious poisoning of her womanizing husband. Does Vish, the old medicine woman down in the ravine, hold the key to Birdie's elusive character? Or does Parnell, the town undertaker, whose unspeakable desires bring lust for life and death together? Or does the secret lie with some other colorful old-timer in Mercury, Mississippi, not such a small town anymore? With "graceful, patient, insightful and hilarious" prose (USA Today), Brad Watson chronicles Finus's steadfast devotion and Mercury's evolution from a sleepy backwater to a small city. With this "tragicomic story of missed opportunities and unjust necessities" (Fred Chappell), "Southern storytelling is alive and well in Watson's capable hands" (Kirkus Reviews starred review). "His work may remind readers of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, or Flannery O'Connor, but has a power—and a charm—all its own, more pellucid than the first, gentler than the second, and kinder than the third" (Baltimore Sun).

Brad Watson

Books

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