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Antarctica

Antarctica

by Claire Keegan

“Reading Irish-born Claire Keegan is like succumbing to a drug: eerie, hallucinogenic, time-stopping.”—San Francisco Chronicle

A new edition of the now iconic fiction writer Claire Keegan’s debut story collection featuring a new woodcut cover to tie in with her current bestselling trio: the Booker Prize shortlisted Small Things Like These, Foster, and So Late in the Day

Paperback

Imprint Grove Paperback
Page Count 224
Publication Date October 29, 2024
ISBN-13 978-0-8021-6374-5
Dimensions 5.5" x 8.25"
US List Price $18.00

Claire Keegan’s works of fiction are internationally acclaimed and have been translated into thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award—the world’s richest prize for a short story. Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Kerry Prize for Irish Novel of the Year. She was awarded Woman of the Year for Literature in Ireland, 2022, and Author of the Year, 2023.
Read More About Claire Keegan

First published in 1999 to great acclaim, Antarctica introduced the world to Claire Keegan whose powerful short fiction has captured audiences internationally and is considered “nothing short of a masterpiece” (New York Times). Now with a recently revised titular story, Antarctica showcases the brilliance of Keegan’s spare yet piercing storytelling, evident from the very start of her career.

In “Antarctica,” a married woman travels out of town to see what it’s like to sleep with a man other than her husband. “Love in the Tall Grass” takes Cordelia down a coastal road on the last day of the twentieth century to keep a date with her lover that has been nine years in the waiting. “Stay Close to the Water’s Edge” tells of a young Harvard student who is pitilessly humiliated by his homophobic stepfather on his birthday. Keegan’s writing contains a clear vision of unaffected truths and boldly explores a world where dreams, memory, and chance have crippling consequences for those involved. Often dark and enveloped in a palpable atmosphere, the reader feels that something momentous is lurking within each of these carefully sculpted tales.

Winner of several prestigious prizes including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the William Trevor Prize, and the Martin Healy Award, Antarctica remains a dazzling and haunting debut by one of the world’s best short story writers.

Tags Short Stories (single author)

**Praise for Antarctica:**

“That Keegan has a knack for story-telling is proved many times over, in stories that reject the parable approach for a more informal, intimate style. . . . Her ear seems to tune in to the rhythms of life with enviably direct phrasing.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Antarctica is an appropriate title from these spare and chilly stories by the up-and-coming Irish writer Claire Keegan. . . . Keegan [is] an authentic talent with a gimlet eye and a distinctive voice.”—The Boston Globe

“In her debut collection, Keegan transcends well-worn themes of adultery and family discord, fashioning resonant stories with fairy-tale simplicity.”—Newsweek

Praise for Claire Keegan:

“I did not think realism could be truly feminist until I saw Keegan wield its techniques . . . When realism is more revelatory of the world than reality itself, what can you do but feel grateful for Keegan’s mastery of it?”—The Atlantic

“Across her oeuvre, Keegan illuminates violence better than almost anyone, avoiding easy didacticism. She pulls apart the strands of misogyny in individuals and institutions, diagnosing the same problem in both . . . Throughout her career, Keegan seems to emphasize that we take nothing with us and that all that matters is what we give each other.”—Washington Post

“Reading Irish-born Claire Keegan is like succumbing to a drug: eerie, hallucinogenic, time-stopping. Her simplest sentences envelop the brain (and all the senses) in a deep, fully dimensional dream . . . Each story is as substantive as a novel, and as breathtaking . . . Unforgettable.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Keegan is the kind of writer whose spare, slippery work you want to reread . . . [her] sentences shape shift the second time ’round, twisting themselves into a more emotionally complicated story.”—NPR

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