The nine stories that make up this collection, published originally in 1965, give readers the chance to get to know one of the most exuberant and radical North American prose writers of the second half of the twentieth century, who has been rarely translated into this language. These realistic stories, through Elkin's boundless imagination, his lavish phrases that unfold like packed branches of fantastic fruits, and his characters, driven by missions bordering on madness.

Stanley Elkin is a writer. He studied English literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he received a master's and doctorate. Beginning in 1960, he taught creative writing at the University of Washington-St. Louis. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novels George Mills and Mrs. Ted Bliss.