The Affliction

Finalist for the 2019 John Gardner Fiction Book Award Winner of a Guggenheim FellowshipWinner of a National Endowment for the Arts FellowshipWinner of a Rockefeller Foundation FellowshipWinner of the Hanes Award given by the Fellowship of Southern WritersA novel told in short stories, The Affliction is an astounding fiction debut by an award-winning poet full of memorable characters across America and the Caribbean. Young beautifully weaves together the elaborate stories of many while holding together a clear focus: people are not always as they seem."The Affliction is an exhilarating collection..." --Laura van den Berg"These tales treat life-and-death matters with a beautifully eloquent fervor, and, like the stories of Julio Cortázar, they remind us of how varied and unpredictable short stories, like the world itself, can be." --Charles Baxter