A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth: Stories
Daniel Mason“A collection of stories with themes of class division, the artist’s role in society & our need for love & belonging, reflecting a prowess with language and a mastery of the short form.”— 2021 Pulitzer Prize Committee
"Unique & beguiling... Mason's first short story collection is a treasure trove of lush scene setting in faraway times & places, from the wilds of England to the Malay Archipelago... A perfect & fitting pick for these seemingly endless days when science, our understanding of reality & a faint longing for human connection are so irrevocably intertwined." — Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist: This collection of moving short stories is “a treasure trove of lush scene setting in faraway times & places” (Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle).
A Library Journal Best Book of 2020
On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.
At times funny & irreverent, always moving & deeply urgent, these stories—among them a National Magazine Award & a Pushcart Prize winner—cap a 15-year project. From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, & what the New York Times Magazine called the "struggle for survival . . . hand to hand, word to word," by "one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction."
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Daniel Mason is the author of North Woods, A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, & A Registry of My Passage Upon Earth. His writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine & Lapham’s Quarterly.