For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories

Title: For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories
Author: Nathan Englander
ISBN: 9780375704437
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2000
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 205
Section: Fiction | Short Stories (single author)
Publisher Description: Energized, irreverent, and deliciously inventive stories from Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.

In the collection's hilarious title story, a Hasidic man gets a special dispensation from his rabbi to see a prostitute. "The Wig" takes an aging wigmaker and makes her, for a single moment, beautiful. In "The Tumblers," Englander envisions a group of Polish Jews herded toward a train bound for the death camps and, in a deft, imaginative twist, turns them into acrobats tumbling out of harm's way.

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is a work of startling authority and imagination--a book that is as wondrous and joyful as it is wrenchingly sad. It hearalds the arrival of a remarkable new storyteller.