432 pages |Hardcover

From theNew York Timesbestselling, Booker Prize-winning author ofLincoln in the BardoandTenth of December, a literary masterclass on what makes great stories work, how to become both a better writer and reader, and what they can tell us about how to live.

InA Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories hes been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why its more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

Saunders approaches each of these stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. For the process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is as much a craft as it is a quality of openness and a willingness to see the world through new eyes.

Funny, frank, and rigorous,A Swim in a Pond in the Rainultimately shows how great fiction can change a persons life and become a benchmark of ones moral and ethical beliefs.