Details

Subject(s)

• Utopias—Fiction [Browse]

Library of Congress genre(s)

• Fiction [Browse]

Series

• John Simmons short fiction award [More in this series]
• Iowa short fiction award [More in this series]
• The John Simmons short fiction award
• The Iowa short fiction award

Summary note

"Allegra Hyde's debut story collection, Of This New World, offers a menagerie of utopias: real, imagined, and lost. Starting with the Garden of Eden and ending in a Mars colony, the stories wrestle with conflicts of idealism and practicality, communal ambition and individual kink. Stories jump between genres--from historical fiction to science fiction, realism to fabulism--but all ask those fundamental human questions: What do we do when we lose our utopia? What will we do to get it back? Over the course of twelve stories, Hyde writes with a mix of lyricism, humor, and masterful detail. A group of environmental missionaries seeks to start an ideal eco-society on an island in the Bahamas, only to unwittingly tyrannize the local inhabitants and disrupt the social ecosystem. The neglected daughter of a floundering hippie commune must adjust to conventional life with her ungroovy grandmother. A wounded veteran gets lost in erotic fantasies of his twin brother's life. Haunted by her years at a collegiate idyll, a young woman eulogizes a friendship. After indenturing his only son to the Shakers, an antebellum vegan turns to Louisa May Alcott's famous family for help. And in the final story, a down-and-out drug addict gets a second chance at life in a government-sponsored space population program, only to be flummoxed by erectile dysfunction. An unmissable debut, the collection charts the worlds born in our dreams and bred in hope"-- Provided by publisher.

Reproduction note

Electronic reproduction. New York Available via World Wide Web.

Source of description

Print version record.

ISBN

• 9781609384449 ((electronic bk.))
• 160938444X ((electronic bk.))

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