Short stories by Peter Ho Davies
PETER HO DAVIES’s latest book is A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself. His previous novel, The Fortunes, a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, a London Times Best Seller, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Oregon Book Award) and Equal Love(finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book). Davies’ work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Washington Postand TLS among others, and been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its “Best of Young British Novelists.” Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts and a winner of the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Macmillan Awards. Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, he now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Northwestern and Emory University, and is currently on faculty at the University of Michigan.
Listing 4 stories.
A young soldier suffering from flatulence provides comic relief as a means of coping with the traumas of war while recounting his most recent battle against the Zulus.
From the streets of Kuala Lumpur to the deepest reaches of the jungle, a young artist witnesses first-hand the development of a brutal communist insurgency in the mid-twentieth century. From his sketches emerges a horrific yet poignant portrait of the conflict and those who fight it.
A first-generation Welsh man goes back to his father’s hometown for a funeral, where the neighbor’s son was crushed under his father’s toppled stone gate. Suddenly his father, who has lived morosely but peaceably in his decrepit cottage, finds the town has turned against him. A Welsh man’s father falls in disfavor with his hometown when the neighbor’s child is crushed under his toppled stone gate.
On the evening of D-Day, a Welsh bartender endures emotional whiplash and xenophobia as friends and foes alike assail her from all sides.