{"product_id":"an-oral-history-of-atlantis-isbn-9780812988345","title":"An Oral History of Atlantis:Stories","description":"\u003cb\u003eGilt-edged stories that slice clean through the mundanity of modern life, from the author of \u003ci\u003eSame Bed Different Dreams,\u003c\/i\u003e a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Ed Park is one of the funniest writers working today, and among the most humane.”—Kaveh Akbar, author of \u003ci\u003eMartyr!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eTime, \u003c\/i\u003eNPR, \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe, Electric Lit, Lit Hub, Shelf Awareness\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn “Machine City” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line between his character and his true self. (Is he a robot?) In “Slide to Unlock” a man comes to terms with his life via the passwords he struggles to remember in extremis. (What’s his mom’s name backward?) And in “Weird Menace” a director and faded movie star gab about science fiction, bad costume choices, and lost loves on a commentary track for a B-film from the ’80s that neither remembers all that well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Ed Park’s utterly original collection, \u003ci\u003eAn Oral History of Atlantis, \u003c\/i\u003echaracters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognizable and delightfully other. Spanning a quarter century, these sixteen stories tell the absurd truth about our lives. They capture the moment when the present becomes the past—and are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most imaginative and insightful writers working today. | “By turns tongue-in-cheek, elegiac, dreamlike and magical-realist . . . an ode to imagination.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Park] revels in the shorter form, a palpable joy on the page. Irony has never had it so good.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Capsules of wit . . . What these stories have in common is their playful, arty milieu and a sense of encodedness. Language and culture are ciphers that can never be fully broken; the slippery elusiveness of their multiple meanings is meaning enough.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A delectable collection of linked stories, a cocktail of his obsessions: experimental language, pop-culture oddities, screwball characters, cutting-edge technologies, and political conflicts across the globe. Yet he’s a poet of the heart as well as an intellectual archivist, his commitment to art captured in inventive forms.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTIME\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“To speak of Park’s creativity is also to speak of his humanity—empathy is a function of the imagination, of course, and it makes sense that a mind capable of dreaming these worlds and sister verses would also be able to endow them with spirits as vivid and complex as our own.”\u003cb\u003e—Kaveh Akbar, author of \u003ci\u003eMartyr!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What’s the collective noun for a school of stories so bright and brilliant, they ripple with humor, compassion, and wonder? Call them an ‘Ed Park.’ \u003ci\u003eAn Oral History of Atlantis\u003c\/i\u003e will continue to delight us, long after the flood.”\u003cb\u003e—Samantha Hunt, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Dark Dark\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“These stories explore the multiplicity of time and space—artistic, historical, and psychological—and confront once and again the shapeshifting border between reality and unreality. With sly humor and deep understanding, Park makes the reader laugh from disquiet, and tear up from being seen.”\u003cb\u003e—Yiyun Li, author of \u003ci\u003eWednesday’s Child\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Funny, tragic, winsome screwball science-fiction prose poetry of ‘maximum lexical density’ that’s pure pleasure to read.”\u003cb\u003e—Sarah Manguso, author of \u003ci\u003eLiars\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eAn Oral History of Atlantis\u003c\/i\u003e is a snapshot of who we are and where we are as well as an offbeat map to where we might dare to go. The stories are mordant, inventive, heartbreaking, and above all else, profoundly human, and I’m already looking forward to a re-read.”\u003cb\u003e—Paul Tremblay, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eHorror Movie\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The James Joyce of Korean-American literature, and of our times.”\u003cb\u003e—Ilyon Woo, author of \u003ci\u003eMaster Slave Husband Wife\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Park’s delightful tales, which are driven by provocative ideas, strange occurrences, and gripping plots, pay tribute to the legacy of Kurt Vonnegut in the best ways. This pitch-perfect collection will linger in readers’ minds for a long time.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Park infuses his debut story collection with the same extraordinary inventiveness that made his novel \u003ci\u003eSame Bed Different Dreams \u003c\/i\u003e(2023) a Pulitzer Prize finalist.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e | \u003cb\u003eEd Park\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eSame Bed Different Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Prize for Fiction, was named a Top Ten Book of the Year by \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e and was a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book; and \u003ci\u003ePersonal Days\u003c\/i\u003e, a finalist for the PEN\/Hemingway Award. His short fiction has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMcSweeney’s\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Vice\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHarvard Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and other periodicals and anthologies, and he writes regularly for\u003ci\u003e The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, \u003c\/i\u003eand elsewhere. Ed was a founding editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Believer\u003c\/i\u003e and the former literary editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Voice Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e, and has also worked in publishing. Born in Buffalo, he lives in Manhattan with his family, and currently teaches writing at Princeton University. | Pulitzer Prize finalist","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48759432216805,"sku":"NP9780812988345","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812988345.jpg?v=1775598529","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/an-oral-history-of-atlantis-isbn-9780812988345","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}