ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe thanks to my editors, Edward Kastenmeier and Anya Serota; to my agent, Jennifer Carlson; and to Carin Besser at The New Yorker for her skillful reading of this book’s first chapter; as well as to the Arkansas Arts Council for its generous financial support and to Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan, and Angela Cheng Caplan for their interest in the story I’ve told. In researching Antarctica for the even-numbered chapters of this book, I turned first to the anthology Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration, edited by Clint Willis, which led me directly to Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s unparalleled memoir of Antarctic exploration, The Worst Journey in the World, portions of which Laura’s own journey recapitulates.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Brockmeier is the author of The Truth About Celia, the story collection Things That Fall from the Sky, and the children’s novel City of Names. He has published stories in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, and The Best American Short Stories. The first chapter of The Brief History of the Dead appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and was nominated for a Nebula award. He has received the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a James Michener–Paul Engle Fellowship, three O. Henry Awards (one of which was a first prize), and an NEA grant. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
ALSO BY KEVIN BROCKMEIER
The Truth About Celia
Things That Fall from the Sky
FOR CHILDREN
City of Names
Grooves: A Kind of Mystery
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, entities, products, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2006 by Kevin Brockmeier
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brockmeier, Kevin.
The brief history of the dead / Kevin Brockmeier.
p. cm.
e-ISBN 0-375-42423-7
1. Death—Fiction. 2. Epidemics—Fiction. 3. Future life—Fiction. 4. Wilderness survival—Fiction. 5. Antarctica—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R63B75 2006
813'.6—dc22 2005048882
www.pantheonbooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-375-42423-6
v3.0
Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead
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