List $34.95

Written by John Murray - Unabridged Fiction - 8 CASSETTES

Publisher, Harper Audio (March 2003)

In this remarkably assured and satisfying debut collection, John Murray seamlessly meshes fact with fiction, taking his inspiration from the worlds of science, medicine, and nature. The stories are set in intriguing locations across the globe -- a cholera tent in the slums of Bombay, a United Nations refugee camp in the mountains of Africa, a Key West hideaway -- where his characters, among them doctors, nurses, research scientists, explorers, and collectors, can be found reading The Manual of Clinical Microbiology or Gray's Anatomy or the Complete Textbook of Psychiatry.

And yet, despite the pull of the outer world, these stories are all about the internal world of emotions -- love, loss, obsession, and conflict -- and about families and how they survive. They unfold to tell of moments when people catch glimpses of their real selves, their pasts, and have flashes of understanding about their lives. In The Hill Station, an American-born scientist is drawn to Bombay, the homeland of her parents, where she breaks free from the confines of her well-ordered life. The title story tells of an aging surgeon who uses his grandfather's collection of butterflies to try and make sense of his past. In "Blue" a young man -- still haunted by the tragic death of his father years earlier -- traverses the Himalayan mountain that would have been his father's last climb. In Acts of Memory, Wisdom of Man, the son of Indian immigrants relives the summer of 1968, and the events that determined his brother's fate.

Vivid and alive, these stories reveal whole lives -- characters caught between the past and the present, between different cultures, and between their intellects and emotions. Global in scope, classical in form, evocative of place, this rich collection marks an exciting and original debut.

“Writing that bristles with emotive power.” --Library Journal

“Brilliant.... How lucky for all of us that he chose to write fiction.” --Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto

“These stories linger with you like a delicious aftertaste.” --Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and The Tennis Partner

“Vibrant debut story collection…Murray’s prose is strong and agile…the affecting portraits make this collection emotionally resonant and enormously gratifying” --Publishers Weekly(starred review)

“Stunning short story collection…writer to watch.” --Booklist (starred)

“As gorgeous and breathtaking as the winged marvels of the title. Compassionate stories such as these remind us what constitutes humanity.” --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“In a great tradition of writer/physicians, John Murray is an utterly remarkable new one.... Science and medicine may be both subject and method in many of these remarkable stories but so too are they formed by a profound poetry and ease of metaphor that mark an emergent writer of remarkable gifts...this book marks the debut of an extraordinary American writer.” --Buffalo News

“Remarkable...marks the debut of an extraordinary American writer.” --Buffalo News

“As gorgeous and breathtaking as the winged marvels of the title...stories such as these remind us what constitutes humanity.” --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“The eight stories in John Murray’s first short-story collection achieve, individually and - collectively, an extraordinary impact and depth.” --San Diego Tribune

About the Author: John Murray trained as a doctor and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a teaching-writing fellow. The Hill Station won the Prairie Lights Short Fiction Award, and the title story was selected by Joyce Carol Oates for the Best New American Voices 2002 fiction anthology. John Murray currently lives in Iowa.