The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories Paperback – November 9, 2021 by Danielle Evans

Description

Author: Evans Danielle

Color: White

Package Dimensions: 24x202x224

Number Of Pages: 288

Release Date: 09-11-2021

Details: Product Description
WINNER OF THE 2021 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY O MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, THE WASHINGTON POST, REAL SIMPLE, THE GUARDIAN, AND MORE  FINALIST FOR: THE STORY PRIZE, THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE, THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE “Sublime short stories of race, grief, and belonging . . . an extraordinary new collection . . .” —The New Yorker   “Evans’s new stories present rich plots reflecting on race relations, grief, and love . . .” —The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

“Danielle Evans demonstrates, once again, that she is the finest short story writer working today.” —Roxane Gay, The New York Times–bestselling author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist

The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history.

Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights into complex human relationships. With
The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters’ lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief—all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history—about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.

In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend’s unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.
Review
Praise for The Office of Historical Corrections:“No other fiction I’ve read this year wears its profundity so lightly.” —
The New Yorker

“Evans’s stories and their sensitivity to issues around race and power feel particularly resonant in 2020.” —
The New York Times

“The title novella manages to combine George Orwell’s bureaucratic chill from
1984 with Toni Morrison’s elegant judgments from
Beloved.” —
The Washington Post

“Perceptively touch[es] on current controversies like cancel culture and the disputes over historical monuments. But these are, first and foremost, character-driven stories, and the arguments play out most forcefully in the minds of the young black women searching for some livable balance between guilt and forgiveness. . . . Ms. Evans is also funny in a droll, puncturing way, as inclined to mine trauma for mordant humor as for sentimentality.” —
The Wall Street Journal

“Evans’s propulsive narratives read as though they’re getting away with something, building what feel like novelistic plots onto the short story’s modest real estate. No surprise, then, that this collection concludes with its title novella, about a Black professor who quits her job to work for the city government, correcting factual mistakes in the public record. The story marries Melvillian mundanity with melodramatic suspense. I could have kept reading for pages.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“[Evans is] a master of the form, and her new collection is a sharply observed and perfectly aligned universe. With wry observation and an ear for the inner and outer monologue, Evans vividly creates microclimates that examine the ponderous nature of grief, the infinitesimal line between micro- and macroaggressions, and the fog of relationships. An essential read.” —
Elle “Evans is a writer with a gift for the sudden knife in the ribs. . . . I hur