Hibernate

Elizabeth Eslami

Table of Contents

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The author recommends the following links:

The Short Review

Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast

The Rumpus

The Millions

The Nervous Breakdown

“The Ambition of the Short Story,” The New York Times, Sunday Book Review

“Each of Eslami’s stories works on the reader like a solar eclipse. There is the same feeling of melancholy suspense, the expectation of something rare and beautiful, of being held both inside and outside of time. And then comes that brief moment when we are able to look fully at what would otherwise blind us, those things we do to each other in the name of love and anger and fear.” —Karen Palmer, author of All Saints and Border Dogs

“Using clean lines, Eslami cannily depicts the variety of human strangeness and longing. These stories are sage, vital, and addictive. More than that: they will pierce your heart.” —Elise Blackwell, author of An Unfinished Score and Hunger

“Oh, what a writer. Elizabeth Eslami continuously surprises and amazes. Hibernate is a collection of unique and astonishing stories.” —Marcy Dermansky, author of Bad Marie and Twins

Hibernate is a big-hearted and brutal story collection. In these globe-spanning stories, Elizabeth Eslami follows ordinary men and women who slowly awaken to hard choices. A fishing trip forces two Montana brothers to grow up in ways they never could have imagined. A Sudanese immigrant begins a new life with his girlfriend in America, only to find himself pulled toward his mother’s past transgressions. A group of tourists visits an Indian pueblo and realizes their tour guide isn’t at all who they expected. A shipwrecked captain and his men cling to the company of narwhals and Eskimos. And in the unforgettable title story, two lovers trade life as they’ve known it for an escape into the extraordinary.

A masterful storyteller as likely to draw blood as to heal, Eslami moves her restless, resilient characters across an uneven landscape toward a hard earned place of peace.

Elizabeth Eslami teaches in the MFA program at Manhattanville College and is a senior prose editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She is the author of the novel Bone Worship.