Little Kingdoms [Paperback]

Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelous—and often disquieting—effect inLittle Kingdoms, a collection whose three novellas suggest magical companion pieces to his acclaimed longer fictions.

In The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne, a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And Catalogue of the Exhibition introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them. Millhauser's writing is dazzling. —David Leavitt,Esquire

Millhauser makes our world turn amazing! —The New York Times Book Review

An American writer of surpassing skill.... He renders the impossible itself with precision. —Chicago TribuneSteven Millhauser received the Pulitzer Prize forMartin Dressler. He is a recipient of the Lannan Award and has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The author ofEdwin Mullhouse,The Barnum Museum, andThe Penny Arcade, among other books, he teaches at Skidmore College and lives with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York.US