Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies

“Thirst is a book to give to people who piss and moan about the unpromising future of American fiction. It’s the most exciting story collection since George Saunders’ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline; and Ken Kalfus is an important writer in every sense of ‘important.’ There are hip, funny writers, and there are smart, technically innovative writers, and there are wise, moving, and profound writers. Kalfus is all these at once, and the stories in Thirst manage simultaneously to delight, impress, provoke, and redeem. Three cheers and then some.”

—David Foster Wallace

“These stories are genuinely magical, that is, the transformations they work are real, not illusions. Thirst is a collection steeped in wonder.”

—Stuart Dybek

“One of the most potent debut books of this year.”

—Village Voice

“Ken Kalfus reminds us that the short story is not an easily contained form, a single thing done in a single way…. The displaced figures in Thirst drift through worlds that are at once astonishing and familiar.”

—New York Times Book Review

“It’s exhilarating to discover a young writer with so much range and so little self-consciousness about exploring it. The publication of Thirst marks the debut of a major talent.”

—Salon

“Thirst is a tense, driving narrative that may put some readers in mind of Hemingway’s best short fiction.”

—Washington Post

“Slyly subversive… Kalfus unerringly recognizes the comedy inherent in our quandaries of knowing and being, and suggests that laughter best quenches existential thirst.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Kalfus himself is more shaman than politician—even when his stories rub up against geopolitical borders, he takes to the spiritual and dissolves them into magic. In this beautiful, varied volume of 14 stories and ‘routines,’ the well-traveled author launches himself far afield to tell his tales.”

—Newsday

“His debut story collection, Thirst, eludes all attempts at categorization save this one: It’s the bravest and most accomplished first book I’ve read all year. Each of the 14 stories in Thirst feels focused, pared down to its pure essences.”

—Daily Herald

“An intelligent and playful collection of stories that will move readers by engaging their sense of wonder and joy of exploration.”

—Boston Book Review

“Thirst deftly explores a range of issues—from sexual desire and sleep disorders to the theatrical preparations for a drug trial. The 14 stories are comic, surreal, dark, nostalgic and uniformly excellent…. Kalfus creates a compelling momentum that leaves both Nula and the reader on the verge of a trance…. Let me be the first to suggest that Major League Baseball hire Ken Kalfus to concoct possible answers to all their lingering questions, both real and imagined. I’ll happily buy his answers.”

—Sunday Oregonian

“Kalfus is as playful as postmodern masters Barthelme and Barth. Stories like ‘The Weather in New York’ are zingy with metafictional mayhem. Hilarious.”

—St. Petersburg Times

“Playful, moving short stories about travel, childhood and loss, from a writer who does almost everything well. The story collection of the year. Really.”

—Paper Magazine