Back in the World: Stories

Tobias Wolff

Houghton, Mifflin, 1985 - Fiction - 221 pages

Back in the World brings us ten classic stories from one of America's finest storytellers. Fresh and direct, Tobias Wolff's voice calls up for us the lives of strikingly diverse people: a cynical real estate agent fetching his younger brother from a religious commune, a show-biz hopeful who finds himself auditioned in a hearse by a dubious film crew, a priest, a soldier, a teen-age girl, men looking for women and women washing their hands of men. In each of these remarkable stories Tobias Wolff conveys the discrepancy between the everyday world and the secret dreams and aspirations of his characters. Wolff moves gently among these men and women, and unforgettably records their fallibilities, crises, defeats -- and their ability to go on. These tales have their origins in the human heart; they speak to people everywhere.

About the author

Tobias Wolff was born in Birmingham, Alabama on June 19, 1945. He served in the military as a paratrooper during the Vietnam War. He received a B.A. in 1972 and a M.A. in 1975 from the University of Oxford and a M.A. in 1978 from Stanford University. He held faculty positions at Stanford University, Goddard College, Arizona State University, and Syracuse University. He was also a reporter for the Washington Post. His first collection of short stories, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, won the St. Lawrence award for fiction in 1982. His other works include Back in the World, In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of a Lost War, The Night in Question, Old School, and Our Story Begins. The Barracks Thief won the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction in 1985. This Boy's Life: A Memoir won the Los Angeles Times Book prize in 1989 and was made into a 1993 film starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. He also won three O. Henry Awards in 1980, 1981, and 1985 and the National Medal of Arts in 2015. He edited several anthologies of short stories including Matters of Life and Death: New American Stories, A Doctor's Visit: Short Stories by Anton Chekhov, and The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Back in the World: Stories
• Author: Tobias Wolff
• Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin, 1985
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 14, 2008
• ISBN: 0395354161, 9780395354162
• Length: 221 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Short Stories (single author)