Besieged

by James Lasdun

James Lasdun's two collections of short stories, Delirium Eclipse and Three Evenings , have won him outstanding praise as one of the most distinctive British writers of his generation, both as a stylist and as a storyteller. His work has been described by the New York Times Book Review as an "elegant pathology report on the modern soul," and the Village Voice calls his prose "art that burrows into troubling new territory even as it glides by like a dream." Besieged shows his gift for exploring the undertones of contemporary experience at its most haunting and electrically charged. Against a variety of stunningly evoked backgrounds―from the teeming banks of the Ganges in Varanasi to a homeless shelter in New York―these powerful, intensely focused narratives reverberate, as Michiko Kakutani put it in the New York Times , "insistently in the reader's mind long after he has finished the book." In "Ate/Menos" or "The Miracle," a young man takes unscrupulous advantage of a woman who mistakes him for someone else and finds himself enmeshed in her desperate obsessions and nightmares. In "The Siege," a wealthy recluse falls in love with the immigrant woman who lives in his basement. On discovering she is married and that her husband is a political prisoner, he embarks on a course of action that will lead simultaneously to his destruction and to his salvation. Two of the stories in this collection were made into major independent film. "Ate Menos" was the basis for the film Sunday , which won the Grand Jury Best Feature Award at Sundance. "The Siege" was adapted by Bernardo Bertolucci for his film Besieged.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

235 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 1999

About the author

James Lasdun was born in London and now lives in upstate New York. He has published two novels as well as several collections of short stories and poetry. He has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the Los Angeles Times, T. S. Eliot, and Forward prizes in poetry; and he was the winner of the inaugural U.K./BBC Short Story Prize. His nonfiction has been published in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I piped louder, but my ingenious explanation—that all the action happens between the footprints, so that only the moments of stillness are made visible by the snow—was drowned by my relatives’ voices…” (53).
“It was satisfying to cleave the iron through the linen waves and see the smooth white wake stretch out behind” (67).
“ ‘Do you see? Isn’t that good? The carpet is a song turned into a silk tapestry’” (87).
“Beyond the window the dark pink sunset was drawn, like a conjuror’s silk handkerchief, through a band of clouds” (92).
“He did not have the air of a man who had just sent an anonymous gift of fancy tulips” (155).
“Against the orphaned clutter with its faint aura of misfortune, the human beings looked bright and predatory” (196).
“Then the chandeliers began; slung on poles between porters like strange shot-down creatures of the upper air, their dusty plumage hanging limp” (200).

[Gideonleek · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the half dozen or so best writers around in this day and age

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant collection of short stories. 'Spiders and Manatees' and Three Evenings' my favourites.

[Christopher Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tantalising and thoughtful stories, little examinations and explorations of human foibles. Beautiful flowing prose that dissects his characters with clarity and compassion.

[Molly G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Siege"