These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction.

The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver's masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark 'Camp Sundown' vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. 'Free Fruit for Young Widows' is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. 'Sister Hills' chronicles the history of Israel's settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander's classic themes, 'Peep Show' and 'How We Avenged the Blums' wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And 'Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side' is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form.

Beautiful and courageous, funny and achingly sad, Englander's work is a revelation.