"If you really want to journey into the heart of darkness, you'd be
advised to travel with Vancouver writer Keath Fraser, a man of
extraordinary talents." --Bronwyn Drainie
An icon of Canadian short fiction, Keath Fraser has exerted a wide and
trenchant influence since the publication of his first collection
Taking Cover in 1982. Damages: Selected Stories 1982-2012 gathers
the finest of his work across decades. Combining the craftsmanship of
the form's greatest masters with the idiosyncratic voices and music of
our contemporary moment, the stories selected here travel from the
richly peopled worlds of Fraser's Vancouver to the Gulf of Thailand, a
Phnom Penh bone-house embassy, and the Rajasthan desert, and demonstrate
remarkable diversity of character and effortless storytelling across a
range of modes. Featuring an introduction by John Metcalf, and including
the novella "Foreign Affairs," called by the Oxford Companion of
Canadian Literature "one of the masterpieces of Canadian short
fiction," Damages showcases Keath Fraser as one of the best and most
enduring story writers of the last fifty years.