The Peculiar State

Translated by Kathleen Heil
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Original Selection

Hamburg: home of a lapsed writer and his statistician girlfriend. He is part of the 41 percent of the German population that hasn’t read a single book in the last three months; she decides to make up a game. The rules of the game are these: the two of them travel to a European city, separately, and try to find each other. They make no calls, leave no messages.  They wander through Madrid, Munich, Coimbra. When they meet, they return home. But what happens if they don’t?  

“The Peculiar State” is a haunting, mischievous new story from Patricio Pron, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists and the author of My Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain. A thought-provoking, city-hopping story from one of South America’s most important new writers.

An eBook short.
© Jeosm
PATRICIO PRON, born in 1975, is the author of seven novels and six story collections, and he also works as a translator and critic. His fiction has appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and The Paris Review, and he has received numerous prizes, including the Alfaguara Prize, the Juan Rulfo Prize, the Premio Literario Jaén de Novela award, and the 2008 José Manuel Lara Foundation Award for one of the five best works published in Spain that year. He lives in Madrid. View titles by Patricio Pron
Praise for Patricio Pron and My Fathers’ Ghost is Climbing in the Rain

“Patricio Pron is an immense talent, a daring writer with an absolutely unique voice. My Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain is a marvel.” 
—Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio

“Pron’s novel haunts me. [It] turned my heart upside down. . . . [He] is brilliant on the topic of growing up in the aftermath of heroic collapse.”  
The New York Times Book Review

“Startlingly brilliant. . . . As the book progresses Pron’s intense and exquisitely described interiority of the early parts slowly falls prey to the pull of a personal, communal, and national history that ever more firmly stakes it claims on the narrator.” 
The Daily Beast

About

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Original Selection

Hamburg: home of a lapsed writer and his statistician girlfriend. He is part of the 41 percent of the German population that hasn’t read a single book in the last three months; she decides to make up a game. The rules of the game are these: the two of them travel to a European city, separately, and try to find each other. They make no calls, leave no messages.  They wander through Madrid, Munich, Coimbra. When they meet, they return home. But what happens if they don’t?  

“The Peculiar State” is a haunting, mischievous new story from Patricio Pron, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists and the author of My Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain. A thought-provoking, city-hopping story from one of South America’s most important new writers.

An eBook short.

Author

© Jeosm
PATRICIO PRON, born in 1975, is the author of seven novels and six story collections, and he also works as a translator and critic. His fiction has appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and The Paris Review, and he has received numerous prizes, including the Alfaguara Prize, the Juan Rulfo Prize, the Premio Literario Jaén de Novela award, and the 2008 José Manuel Lara Foundation Award for one of the five best works published in Spain that year. He lives in Madrid. View titles by Patricio Pron

Praise

Praise for Patricio Pron and My Fathers’ Ghost is Climbing in the Rain

“Patricio Pron is an immense talent, a daring writer with an absolutely unique voice. My Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain is a marvel.” 
—Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio

“Pron’s novel haunts me. [It] turned my heart upside down. . . . [He] is brilliant on the topic of growing up in the aftermath of heroic collapse.”  
The New York Times Book Review

“Startlingly brilliant. . . . As the book progresses Pron’s intense and exquisitely described interiority of the early parts slowly falls prey to the pull of a personal, communal, and national history that ever more firmly stakes it claims on the narrator.” 
The Daily Beast

Books for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Each May, we honor the stories, histories, and cultures of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Below is a selection of acclaimed fiction and nonfiction books by AANHPI creators to share with your students this month and throughout the year. Find our full collection of titles for Higher Education here.

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