'The Russian greats truly shine in this account but Saunders is the real star.

'One of the most accurate and beautiful depictions of what it is like to be inside the mind of a writer that I've ever read' - New York Times Published now, it feels like vital and civilising corrective to the pretend certainties of public life - and, increasingly, of our personal lives too' - Telegraph Published any time, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain would be a joyous reminder that fiction is 'the most effective mode of mind-to-mind communication ever devised'. unfailingly, often thrillingly illuminating. One of the pleasures of this book is feeling his own thinking move backwards and forwards, between the writer dissecting practice and the reader entering in through the spell of the words, to dwell inside the story' - Tessa Hadley, Guardian'Saunders is such a wise and amiable teacher. All this makes Saunders's book very different from just another 'how to' creative writing manual, or just another critical essay. I love the warmth with which he writes about this teaching, and agree wholeheartedly. Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC ISBN: 9781526624284 Number of pages: 432 Weight: 538 g Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm MEDIA REVIEWSĪ wonderful book. Funny, frank, and rigorous, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain ultimately shows how great fiction can change a person's life and become a benchmark of one's moral and ethical beliefs. 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.įor 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. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a literary masterclass on how to become both a better writer and reader, on what makes great stories work, and what they can tell us about how to live.

A swim in a pond in the rain paperback