The Small Backs of Children: A Novel
Lidia YuknavitchNational Bestseller
A masterful literary talent explores the treacherous, often violent borders between war & sex, love & art.
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With the flash of a camera, one girl’s life is shattered, & a host of others altered forever. . .
In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image wins acclaim & prizes, becoming an icon for millions—and a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer’s best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own.
As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends, including a fearless bisexual poet & an ingenuous performance artist, to save her by rescuing the unknown girl & bringing her to the United States. And yet, as their plot unfolds, everything we know about the story comes into question: What does the writer really want? Who is controlling the action? And what will happen when these two worlds—east & west, real & virtual—collide?
A fierce, provocative, & deeply affecting novel of both ideas & action that blends the tight construction of Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending with the emotional power of Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children is a major step forward from one of our most avidly watched writers.
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Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the novel Dora: A Headcase, & three books of short stories. She wrote the widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water.