{"title":"Joy Williams","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJoy Williams\u003c\/strong\u003e crafts fiction that often explores the complexities of human relationships and the subtle tensions beneath everyday life. Her narratives blend lyrical prose with a keen eye for the absurd and the poignant, inviting readers to reflect on the fragility and resilience of the human spirit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the contemplative depths of \u003cem\u003eConcerning the Future of Souls\u003c\/em\u003e to the evocative storytelling in \u003cem\u003eHarrow\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Pelican Child\u003c\/em\u003e, Williams' work resonates with a quiet intensity. Expect writing that is both intellectually engaging and emotionally rich within the sphere of general fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"concerning-the-future-of-souls-by-joy-williams-9781805222538","title":"Concerning the Future of Souls","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoy Williams offers ninety-nine illuminations on mortality as she brings her powers of observation to Azrael, the Angel of Death and transporter of souls. Balancing the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, the book presents Azrael as a thoughtful and troubled protagonist as he confronts the holy impossibility of his task, his uneasy relationship with Death and his friendship with the Devil.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this follow-up to Williams' \u003cem\u003e99 Stories of God\u003c\/em\u003e, a collection of connected beings—ranging from ordinary people to great artists such as Kafka, Nietzsche, Bach and Rilke to dogs, birds, horses and butterflies—experience the varying fate of the soul, transient yet everlasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eProfound, sorrowful, witty and ecstatic, \u003cem\u003eConcerning the Future of Souls\u003c\/em\u003e will leave readers awestruck in their confrontation of life in the face of death.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46711161225452,"sku":"9781805222538","price":32.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9275a3ac0f2610ca7a5948e5f744069c.jpg?v=1754213082"},{"product_id":"the-pelican-child-by-joy-williams-9781805228578","title":"The Pelican Child","description":"Lauded as the best story writer of our time, Joy Williams returns with a taut collection that responds to our modern dilemmas with her signature dry wit and deftness of touch. In sinister and shifting landscapes, we meet souls lost and found: from the twin heiresses of a dirty industrial fortune, who must commit a violent act in recompense for their family's deeds, to a newly grown man who still revolves in a dreamscape of his childhood boarding-school innocence, to the \"pelican child\", who lives with the bony, ill-tempered Baba Yaga in a little hut on chicken legs.  For readers of Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill and George Saunders, these haunted stories examine the instincts separating us from the beastly and the divine.","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47288969101548,"sku":"9781805228578","price":29.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/307c817d7290484f7f6d8e87bf7542da.jpg?v=1770602534"},{"product_id":"harrow-by-joy-williams-9781800810020","title":"Harrow","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn her first novel since \u003ci\u003eThe Quick and the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), the legendary writer takes us into an uncertain landscape after an environmental apocalypse, a world in which only the man-made has value, but some still wish to salvage the authentic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'When the book was over, I missed the awful, cleansing darkness of its eyes upon me '\u003c\/em\u003e - \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e Books of the Year 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'This is the apocalypse as reimagined by a committee headed by Dali, Kafka and Yorgos Lanthimos.'\u003c\/em\u003e - \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Fiction\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted for the 2022 LA Times Prize\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLonglisted for the PEN\/Jean Stein Book Award\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKhristen is a teenager who, her mother believes, was marked for greatness as a baby when she died for a moment, then came back to life. After Khristen's boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and her mother disappears, she ranges across the dead landscape and finds a 'resort' on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call 'Big Girl'.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn a rotting honeycomb of rooms, these old ones plot actions to punish corporations and people they consider culpable in the destruction of the final scraps of nature's beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRivetingly strange and delivered with Williams' searing, deadpan wit, \u003ci\u003eHarrow\u003c\/i\u003e is a tale of paradise lost and the reasons to try and recover something of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47470767800556,"sku":"9781800810020","price":24.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781800810020-harrow.jpg?v=1775226458"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/joy-williams.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}