The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, The Coast of Chicago is a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers. “Has claim to comparison with Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Joyce's Dubliners. . .Dybek's energetic prose produces dazzling effects.” ― Chicago Sun-Times “Moving and real and often brilliantly ambitious.” ― Los Angeles Times “A fictional world that is both ordinary and amazing.” ― The New York Times “Irresistible...Mr. Dreiser, Mr. Farrell, Mr. Bellow, Mr. Algren, please say hello to Stuart Dybek. He's one of yours.” ― The Village Voice “Establishes [Dybek] not merely as a talent but as a magician comparable to Eudora Welty and Joy Williams.” ― Chicago Tribune “Tender and unforgiving...No matter where you grew up, after reading these stories you'll have found the coast of Chicago” ― San Francisco Chronicle Stuart Dybek is the author of five books of fiction- -Ecstatic Cahoots , Paper Lantern , I Sailed with Magellan , The Coast of Chicago , and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods --as well as two collections of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink . Dybek is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers' Award, four O. Henry Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is distinguished writer-in-residence at Northwestern University.