eorge Saunders is that rare contemporary author who is as original as he is beloved—even rarer for having made his name on that often overlooked form of fiction, the short story. His first collection was the 1996 book and even as his star has risen through the decades and he’s written in other forms—collections of essays, his Booker Prize–winning novel —he keeps returning to stories. Last year, the former MacArthur Fellow channeled his years of teaching fiction at Syracuse University into a tour-de-force literary class for the masses called his book exploring short stories by Russian greats like Turgenev, Chekhov, and Gogol. Returning to one’s own short fiction after dissecting and exalting those masterworks takes a certain amount of guts. But readers can be bold original humor, the blurred view of American life, and the sweet humanity that pierces through it all.
