A dazzling, prizewinning short story collection that showcases a bold new talent


Williams delights not simply in wordplay but also in people who are alive to the poignant and humorous potential of language. --The New YorkerIt's just the real inexplicable gorgeous brilliant thing this book. I love it in a way I usually reserve for people. --Max Porter Eley Williams has been a literary sensation ever since this collection of experimental short fiction was published in the UK. Lauded as elegant (The Guardian) and exhilarating (Vanity Fair), Attrib. and Other Stories won the James Tait Black Prize, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named a best book of the year by The Guardian. Attrib. presents a cast of unforgettable characters standing at the precipice of emotional events (a disastrous breakup, a successful date, an unexpected arrival) and finding it fiendishly impossible to express themselves. With intimate, irreverent, and playful prose, Eley Williams rejoices in both the possibilities and limitations of language, as well as the very human need to be known and understood--despite our own best efforts. Original and inventive in the vein of Lydia Davis, Deborah Eisenberg, and Amy Hempel, these stories are emotionally delicate and tenderly introspective (New Statesman) and an absolute must-read (The London Magazine).