The Wallet and Other Thefts

Winner of the BOMB Fiction Prize and White Review Short Story Prize, Kristen Gleason’s debut is a collection of precise, surreal, and lightly linked short fiction, concerned with theft, shame, exile, masochism, and God, reminiscent of Anna Kavan, Jane Bowles, and Marie NDiaye.

Closely observed and slyly destabilizing, The Wallet and Other Thefts is a book of short fiction shimmering with mystery and menace. This surreal, precise collection unfolds in a world beyond conventional time and space. Concerned with theft, shame, exile, tourism, masochism, God, and “Nature,” these stories are lightly linked—objects, diseases, and landscapes reappear. Gleason’s elliptical prose refuses traditional narrative logic, resisting easy resolution. Reminiscent of the work of Anna Kavan, Jane Bowles, and Marie NDiaye, The Wallet and Other Thefts is a work of slipstream fiction that pulses with a sense of something generously withheld.