The New Press - "Shakespeare's Kitchen" by Lore Segal

Every now and then a piece of work bursts the bounds of its own conventions . . . announcing the existence in our midst of a genuine writer.
—VIVIAN GORNICK, THE NATION

[Other People’s Houses] is inconceivably moving.
—CYNTHIA OZICK

[Her First American] outdistances our contemporary expectations of fiction . . . to maintain a lasting place not only in American literature but in that of the world.
—STANLEY CROUCH

Shakespeare's Kitchen

Stories

Lore Segal

paperback

$14.95

The much anticipated new book from the acclaimed author of Other People’s Houses and Her First American—Lore Segal’s first major work of fiction in twenty years

Lore Segal is . . . one of those rare people who combine art, eccentricity, honesty, and wisdom and who, by a change of tone, an altered inflection, produce such enchanting effects that the [reader] is swept along.
—CHICAGO TRIBUNE

The thirteen interrelated stories of Shakespeare’s Kitchen concern the universal longing for friendship, how we achieve new intimacies for ourselves, and how slowly, inexplicably, we lose them. Featuring six never-before-published pieces, Lore Segal’s stunning new book evolved from seven short stories that originally appeared in the New Yorker (including the O. Henry Prize–winning “The Reverse Bug”).

Ilka Weisz has accepted a teaching position at the Concordance Institute, a think tank in Connecticut, reluctantly leaving her New York circle of friends. After the comedy of her struggle to meet new people, Ilka comes to embrace, and be embraced by, a new set of acquaintances, including the institute’s director, Leslie Shakespeare, and his wife, Eliza. Through a series of memorable dinner parties, picnics, and Sunday brunches, Segal evokes the subtle drama and humor of the outsider’s loneliness, the comfort and charm of familiar companionship, the bliss of being in love, and the strangeness of our behavior in the face of other people’s deaths.

A magnificent and deeply moving work, Shakespeare’s Kitchen marks the long-awaited return of a writer at the height of her powers.

Winner of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and the Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction, Lore Segal is the author of the novels Other People’s Houses and Her First American (both available from The New Press), and several books for children. She lives in New York City.

Pub Date: Spring 2008
Format: paperback
Trim: 5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 240 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59558-346-8

Other Editions:

For overseas orders, please contact your local representative from our
Sales & Distribution page.