J. J. Steinfeld, in company with Alice Munro and Alistair MacLeod, is one of Canada’s most dedicated practitioners of the short story form. In this his tenth book of fiction, Steinfeld delivers ten new stories crafted with the mix of humour and pathos that readers have come to expect of his writing. In these stories, Steinfeld employs his understanding of the social and psychological repercussions of the Holocaust to juxtapose the vulnerability–even absurdity–of our modern lives with the resilience of the human spirit.

Poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published twenty-two books: two novels, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (1987) and Word Burials (2009), thirteen short story collections—The Apostate's Tattoo (1983), Forms of Captivity and Escape (1988), Unmapped Dreams (1989), The Miraculous Hand and Other Stories (1991), Dancing at the Club Holocaust (1993), Disturbing Identities (1997), Should the Word Hell be Capitalized? (1999), Anton Chekhov was Never in Charlottetown (2000), Would You Hide Me? (2003), A Glass Shard and Memory (2010), Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (2015), An Unauthorized Biography of Being (2016), and Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (2019)—and seven poetry collections, An Affection for Precipices (2006), Misshapenness (2009), Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (2014), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (2018), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (2020), and Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (2021).

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“Steinfeld hides and exposes the Holocaust in his fiction, as he tries to bridge the gap between contemporary Canadian society and the genocide of an earlier generation of Jews.” Michael Greenstein, Globe and Mail