Flannery O'Connor was an American writer of the Southern Gothic tradition. Although her body of work is small, her stories are widely acclaimed. In them, she combines her Catholicism, her Southern-ness, and the grotesque in stories that explore the nature of revelation, grace (or the lack thereof), and redemption. The stories have characters who are often "freaks"—physically (legless, armless, fat, pock-marked) and psychologically. Frequently, the stories are violent, shockingly so; and if not violent, then they still surprise or shock us in some way. But they are meant to startle us into our own revelation. It requires patience and careful reading and re-reading to get to the heart of O'Connor's writing, but it's well worth the effort.
This book presents here for the first time O'Connor's complete works in a single volume. Included are her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away, and her better known short fiction collections including A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge. The book also offers nine additional short stories, selected essays and 259 letters.
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