Winner of the National Book Award

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction.

There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, The Geranium, in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, Judgement Day--sent to her publisher shortly before her death--is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of The Geranium. Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

The American short story master Flannery O'Connor's haunting first novel of faith, false prophets, and redemptive wisdom.

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a blind street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with wise blood, who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles.

This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.

Winner of the National Book Award

Now with a new essay by Hilton Als and a redesigned cover, Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories is the essential collection of this legendary author's most infamous works.

This is the essential volume of the stories of Flannery O'Connor.

In these sly, laconic, and fiercely observed works, O'Connor does nothing less than elaborate a unique and new way of seeing the world. Contorting her sharply drawn characters through her Southern Gothic prism, she produces a panorama unequaled in its vision of the interplays of faith, evil, humor, violence, and compassion that embody American life.

These thirty-one chronologically ordered stories include twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

Taken together, these stories reveal O'Connor's abiding and visionary gift--one that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux. New to this centennial edition is an essay by the critic Hilton Als.

Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.

A brilliant, innovative novel, acutely alert to where the sacred lives--and where it does not

First published in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away is a landmark in American literature--a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Connor's work.
In this, O'Connor's second novel, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousin, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle that Tarwater will become a prophet and baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues, as Tarwater fights an internal battle against his innate faith and the voices calling him to be a prophet while Rayber tries to draw Tarwater into a more reasonable modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relative and lay claim to Bishop's soul. All this is observed by O'Connor with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos.

This bold and brilliant collection is a must for all readers, writers, and students of American literature

When she died in 1964, Flannery O'Connor left behind a body of unpublished essays and lectures as well as a number of critical articles that had appeared in scattered publications during her lifetime. The brilliant pieces in Mystery and Manners, selected and edited by O'Connor's lifelong friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, are characterized by the boldness and simplicity of her style, a fine-tuned wit, understated perspicacity, and profound faith.
The book opens with The King of the Birds, her famous account of raising peacocks at her home in Milledgeville, Georgia. There are three essays on regional writing, including The Fiction Writer and His Country and Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction; two on teaching literature, including Total Effect and the Eighth Grade; and four on the writer and religion, including The Catholic Novel in the Protestant South. Essays such as The Nature and Aim of Fiction and Writing Short Stories are gems. Their value to the contemporary reader--and writer--is inestimable.

Her fiction brilliantly explores the human obsession with seemingly banal things. It might be a new hat or clean hogs or, for Hazel Motes, hero of Wise Blood (1952), an automobile. Nobody with a good car needs to be justified, Hazel assures himself while using its hood for a pulpit to preach his Church Without Christ. As in O'Connor's subsequent work, the characters in this novel are driven to violence, even murder, and their strong vernacular endows them with the discomforting reality of next-door neighbors. In order to recognize a freak, she remarks in one of her essays, you have to have a conception of the whole man.

In the title story of her first, dazzling collection of stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), the old grandmother discovers the comic irrelevance of good manners when she and her family meet up with the sinister Misfit, who claims there is no pleasure but meanness. The terror of urban dislocation in The Artificial Nigger, the bizarre baptism in The River, or one-legged Hulga Hopewell's encounter with a Bible salesman in Good Country People--these startling events give readers the uneasy sense of mysteries about to be revealed.

Her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960), casts the shadow of the Old Testament across a landscape of backwoods shacks, modern towns, and empty highways. Caught between the prophetic fury of his great-uncle and the unrelenting rationalism of his uncle, fourteen-year-old Francis Tarwater undergoes a terrifying trial of faith when he is commanded to baptize his idiot cousin.

The nine stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) show O'Connor's powers at their height. The title story is a terrifying, heart-rending drama of familial and racial misunderstanding. Revelation and The Enduring Chill probe further into conflicts between parental figures and recalcitrant offspring, where as much tension is generated from quiet conversation as from the physical violence of gangsters and fanatics.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Special Award

I have come to think that the true likeness of Flannery O'Connor will be painted by herself, a self-portrait in words, to be found in her letters . . . There she stands, a phoenix risen from her own words: calm, slow, funny, courteous, both modest and very sure of herself, intense, sharply penetrating, devout but never pietistic, downright, occasionally fierce, and honest in a way that restores honor to the word.--Sally Fitzgerald, from the Introduction

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) is widely regarded as one of the great American writers of the twentieth century, author of singular short stories (including A Good Man Is Hard to Find and The Life You Save May Be Your Own) and two novels (Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away). Only in 1979, however, with the publication of her collected letters, could the public fully see the depth of her personal faith and her wisdom as a spiritual guide.

Drawing from all O'Connor's work, and including the complete text of her short story, Revelation, this anthology highlights as never before her distinctive voice as a spiritual writer, covering such topics as Christian Realism, the Church, the relation between faith and art, sin and grace, and the role of suffering in the life of a Christian.

Flannery O'Connor is a master of twentieth-century American fiction, joining, since her untimely death in 1964, the likes of Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Those familiar with her work know that her powerful ethical vision was rooted in a quiet, devout faith and informed all she wrote and did.

Good Things Out of Nazareth, a much-anticipated collection of many of O'Connor's previously unpublished letters--along with those of literary luminaries such as Walker Percy (The Moviegoer), Caroline Gordon (None Shall Look Back), Katherine Anne Porter (Ship of Fools), Robert Giroux and movie critic Stanley Kauffmann. The letters explore such themes as creativity, faith, suffering, and writing. Brought together, they form a riveting literary portrait of these friends, artists, and thinkers. Here we find their joys and loves, as well as their trials and tribulations as they struggle with doubt and illness while championing their beliefs and often confronting racism in American society during the civil rights era.

Praise for Good Things Out of Nazareth

An epistolary group portrait that will appeal to readers interested in the Catholic underpinnings of O'Connor's life and work . . . These letters by the National Book Award-winning short story writer and her friends alternately fit and break the mold. Anyone looking for Southern literary gossip will find plenty of barbs. . . . But there's also higher-toned talk on topics such as the symbolism in O'Connor's work and the nature of free will.--Kirkus Reviews

A fascinating set of Flannery O'Connor's correspondence . . . The compilation is highlighted by gems from O'Connor's writing mentor, Caroline Gordon. . . . While O'Connor's milieu can seem intimidatingly insular, the volume allows readers to feel closer to the writer, by glimpsing O'Connor's struggles with lupus, which sometimes leaves her bedridden or walking on crutches, and by hearing her famously strong Georgian accent in the colloquialisms she sprinkles throughout the letters. . . . This is an important addition to the knowledge of O'Connor, her world, and her writing.--Publishers Weekly

Las historias de este libro hiriente y sobrecogedor tienen como escenario los pueblos y las tierras del sur de Estados Unidos, especialmente su Georgia natal, un mundo decrépito y en ruinas cuyo secular abandono y pobreza ancestral aparecen marcados por la violencia y el odio. Pero, más allá de la sordidez, los conflictos raciales, el asfixiante peso de la religión y la frustrada lucha por la libertad, hay siempre en los cuentos de Flannery O'Connor una extraña belleza, una íntima exposición moral de la condición humana que trasciende la anécdota.

Comparada a menudo con William Faulkner o Carson McCullers, con quienes forjó lo que se ha llamado el «gótico sureño , Flannery O'Connor es una de las narradoras imprescindibles de la literatura norteamericana del siglo XX.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

This volume is a compilation of all of Flannery O'Connor's stories, both those published during her lifetime and others found after her death - many of them translated into Spanish here for the first time.

Flannery O'Connor's unflinching and tormented prose found its highest expression in the short story, a genre she pursued consistently from her student years until her premature and tragic death.

The breathtaking and disturbing titles presented here are set in the small-town and rural US South, especially the author's home state of Georgia. It is a world in shambles, mired in poverty, where hatred and violence have taken firm hold. Yet, amid the sordidness, racial tensions, suffocating religiosity and frustrated struggle for freedom, O'Connor discovers a strange beauty. Her writing is an intimate portrayal of the human condition that transcends mere storytelling.

Often compared to William Faulkner or Carson McCullers, fellow icons of the so-called Southern Gothic style, Flannery O'Connor ranks as one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American literature.

There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

Pero m s all de la sordidez, los conflictos raciales, el asfixiante peso de la religi n y la frustrada lucha por la libertad, hay siempre en los cuentos de Flannery O'Connor una extra a belleza, una ntima exposici n moral de la condici n humana que trasciende la an cdota.

En este volumen se re nen sus mejores relatos, tanto los que public en vida como los que dej in ditos, muchos de los cuales nunca se hab an traducido al castellano.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, The Geranium, in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, Judgement Day--sent to her publisher shortly before her death?is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of The Geranium. Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.