num_pages: 192
description: The appearance of Zo Wicombs first set of short stories You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town precipitated the founding of a fan club that has come to include the writers Toni Morrison J.M. Coetzee Bharati Mukherjee and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as well as critics at the New York Times the Times of London the Wall Street Journal the New Yorker and the Christian Science Monitor. Now after two novels Wicomb returns to the genre that first brought her international acclaim.Set mostly in Cape Town and Glasgow Wicombs new collection of short stories straddles dual worlds. An array of characters drawn with extraordinary acuity inhabits a complexly interconnected twenty-first-century universe. The twelve stories in this collection most previously unpublished explore a spectrum of human relationships: marriage friendship family ties and relations with those who serve and are served. Wicombs intriguing characters include the adolescent girl Elsie navigating between her new life in the icy city of Glasgow and her familys vexed history in South Africa and Dot and Julie a pair of friends once united by the color of their skin and now discovering how time and marriage have divided their paths. Wicombs fluid shifting technique questions conventional certainties and makes for exhilarating reading full of ironic twists ambiguities and moments of startling insight.Long awaited The One That Got Away showcases this brilliant award-winning author at the height of her powers.
language: English
title: The One That Got Away
publisher: The New Press