This Wide Terraqueous World

Haunting essays from acclaimed author Laird Hunt balance intimate remembrance with an examination of the writing life.

In this new collection of nonfiction from the celebrated author of Zorrie, Laird Hunt uses fiction as an inspiration, a tool, even an obsession, employing its methods to get to the heart of experience. The “sizzling” work of Jane Bowles colors his wanderings through Palermo, while a London museum trip provokes a consideration of taxidermy’s storytelling potential and fairytales blend with echoes of W. G. Sebald, Willa Cather, and László Krasznahorkai. From intrigue at the United Nations to a broken-down car in Kansas, from the history of denim to the dangerous games of childhood, This Wide Terraqueous World leads readers down the winding paths of memory as Hunt examines his subjects in razor-sharp prose both eerily spare and richly evocative.

Publication date: March 21, 2023

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25

Page count: 176 pages 

ISBN: 9781566896672

Laird Hunt is the author of Zorrie, which was a 2021 finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. He has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, and Italy’s Bridge Prize. His reviews and essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence.

“Laird Hunt is a sentence writer in whose hand the sentences turn like prisms, reframing these essays’ collective horizon. It’s a collection of dazzling stuff. . . Masterly.”

—Garin Cycholl, Chicago Review of Books

“[Hunt] writes with a poetic sensibility, letting the metaphorical meaning and depth of his observations arise naturally out of his prose without laboring to extract them.”

—Kirkus

“A mysterious, often thrilling collection, beautifully done.”

—Carole Maso

“A kaleidoscope of genre-defying essays that leaves the reader frankly awestruck, This Wide Terraqueous World is a book to celebrate and treasure.”

—Bradford Morrow

“A stunning master class in both awareness and exquisite prose, This Wide Terraqueous World reminds us that Laird Hunt is one of the greatest writers of our time.”

—Selah Saterstrom