Lucky Girls: Stories [Paperback]

First highlighted in The New Yorker fiction issue, here is award-winning writer Nell Freudenbergers debut story collection

Lucky Girls is a collection of five novella-like stories, which take place mostly in Asia. The charactersexpatriates, often by accidentare attracted to the places they find themselves in a romantic way, or repelled by a landscape where every object seems strange. For them, falling in love can be inseparable from the place where it happens.

Living according to unfamiliar rules, these characters are also vulnerable in unique ways. In the title story, a young woman who has been involved in a five-year affair with a married Indian man feels bound to both her memories and her adopted country after his death. The protagonist of Outside the Eastern Gate returns to her childhood home in Delhi, to find a house still inhabited by the impulsive, desperate spirit of her mother, who left her family for a wild journey over the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. In Letter from the Last Bastion, a teenage girl begins a correspondence with a novelist whos built his reputation writing about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and who, in his letters, confides in her a secret about his past.

Highly anticipated in the literary community and beyond, Lucky Girls marks the debut of a very special talent that places her among todays most gifted young writers.

These five stories follow young women living far from home, coping with new and often unfamiliar rules, as they confront the compelling circumstances of adult love. The rich, unforgettable tales in this collection, set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent, showcase a writer of exceptional talent, one of today's most gifted and exciting young voices.