Verdict: Wideman unveils an utterly original voice and structure--hip-hop zen--where each story is a single breath, to be caught, held, shared and savored.

BRIEFS is a groundbreaking collection of “microstories” from celebrated author John Edgar Wideman, previous winner of both the Rea and O. Henry awards saluting mastery of the short story form.

Here he has assembled a masterful collage that explodes our assumptions about the genre. Wideman unveils an utterly original voice and structure- hip-hop zen-where each story is a single breath, to be caught, held, shared and savored. A relief worker’s Sudan bulletin, a jogger’s bullet-dodging daydreams, your neighbor’s fears and fantasies, an absent mother’s regrets-Wideman’s storytellers are eavesdroppers and peeping Toms, diarists and haiku historians. The characters and compass points range from Darfur to Manhattan, from Pittsburgh to Paris, but thetruecoordinatesthese stories chart are the psychic and emotional fault lines beneath our common ground. BRIEFS is an unforgettable map of the lives we inherit, those we invent, and the worlds we wander between first and last loves.