Meditations from a Movable Chair

The twenty-five luminous and intensely personal essays in this collection are, like Andre Dubus's celebrated short stories, a testament to the author's vulnerability, vision, and indestructible faith. Since losing one leg and the use of the other in a 1986 accident, Dubus has experienced despair, learned acceptance, and, finally, found joy in the sacramental magic of even the most quotidian tasks. Whether he is writing of the relationship with his father, the rape of his beloved sister, his Catholic faith, the suicide of a gay naval officer, his admiration for fellow writers like Hemingway and Mailer, or the simple act of making sandwiches for his daughters' lunchboxes, Dubus cuts straight to the heart of things. Here we have a master at the height of his powers, an artist whose work "is suffused with grace, bathed in a kind of spiritual glow" (The New York Times Book Review).

Andre Dubus is the author of nine works of fiction. He has received the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for excellence in short fiction, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Boston Globe's first annual Lawrence L. Winship Award, and fellowships from both the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. He lives in Haverhill, Massachusetts.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>