Thursday, November 22, 2012

Etgar Keret recommends Janet Frame

Israeli author Etgar Keret recommends Janet Frame's 'My Last Story' from her debut collection The Lagoon and Other Stories.

Read Etgar Keret's recommendation and the full text of Frame's short story here:

Electric Literature's Recommended Reading Vol 7 No 3

The Lagoon and other stories was first published in 1952 when Janet Frame was languishing misdiagnosed in a mental institution. Frame had written the stories five years earlier but the accepted manuscript had also been languishing - on the corner of the desk of a dissolute publisher. When the book was finally released after that publisher was replaced, the volume won New Zealand's most prestigious literary prize of the time and the resulting publicity alerted a Doctor at the mental institution to the fact that Frame's ambitions to write may not be have been delusional after all. She was narrowly saved from a scheduled lobotomy.

'My Last Story' is available in print in several current editions around the world, both as part of the original text of The Lagoon and also appearing in a selection of the best of Frame's published stories from across her career:

USA:
Prizes: The Selected Stories of Janet Frame (Counterpoint Press)

UK/Commonwealth (ex Australasia):
The Daylight and the Dust: Selected Short Stories (Virago Modern Classic)
The Lagoon and Other Stories (Bloomsbury Books)

Australia:
The Daylight and the Dust: Selected Short Stories  (Random House Australia)

New Zealand:
Prizes: Selected Short Stories (Vintage, Random House NZ)
Janet Frame Stories & Poems: The Lagoon and The Pocket Mirror (Vintage, Random House NZ)
 

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