Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2017
256 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
The dynamic characters in Kingdom of the Young are searching: for adventure, work, love, absolution, better chances elsewhere.
In a symphonic stream of consciousness, a fanatical child army loses faith in its commander as he ages unforgivably into his thirties. A woman possessed with wanderlust and a small inheritance seeks love among the cave-dwelling Roma in Granada. Traumatized war veterans run local rackets; smarmy bureaucrats rise through the ranks of repressive regimes; civilians attempt to escape the stranglehold of life under dictatorships.
From the honeycombed caves outside the Alhambra to the streets of Havana, from hospital wards to quinceañera parties, these stories - along with the collection's illuminating nonfiction coda - testify to Meidav's vast imaginative range.
"Starred Review. A penetrating collection that glides among an impressive breadth of storytelling modes with warmth and easy brilliance." - Kirkus
"With her first collection of stories, Meidav (Lola, California) offers an uneven but charged series of character portraits." - Publishers Weekly
"Ambitious, original, deliciously philosophical. Kingdom of the Young invites comparison to the crônicas of Clarice Lispector and the fabulas of Italo Calvino." - Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution
"Ambitious, original, deliciously philosophical. Kingdom of the Young invites comparison to the crônicas of Clarice Lispector and the fabulas of Italo Calvino." - Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution
"These stories are dazzling, full of knowledge of the world and of the heart, and written with the pluck and thrum of a flamenco guitarist. Meidav draws you into world after world; she makes you want to sit by your window and listen all night." - Paul La Farge, author of Luminous Airplanes
"Oh what imagination. Oh what story-telling. What beautiful language. What more do you want? Go ahead and be greedy like me. Meidav, a prose stylist of the first rank, has got us covered." - Mitchell S. Jackson, author of The Residue Years
"Edie Meidav's writing is a cascade of fireworks. Her ideas are little bombs - and these stories, fast-spinning sparklers. Her hallucinatory prose flares with color and heart." - Leela Corman, author of Unterzakhn
"An alchemist of empathy, of nuanced observation and unexpected truths, Edie Meidav is a writer whose every magical story probes human experience from triumphs to tragedies and all the terrain between. Kingdom of the Young is nothing short of masterful, the work of a born storyteller in full, glorious voice." - Bradford Morrow , author of The Forgers
"In Kingdom of the Young, whether Edie Meidav riffs on Cuban dogs or 'a tiny pert woman in a cherry tracksuit' called Hummingbird, she unfurls - Terese Svoboda, author of Live Sacrifice
"I loved this book. Her stories and essays make a whole - a brilliant pairing, each part informing the other, with mutual gravitas and depth." - Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions
"Kingdom of the Young will engage readers for its clear authority, musical language and surprising empathy." - Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story
This information about Kingdom of the Young was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Edie Meidav is the author of three novels - The Far Field, Crawl Space, and Lola, California. Her honors include a Lannan Literary Award, the Kafka Award for Best Novel by an American Woman, the Bard Fiction Prize, a Whiting Award, and a Howard Fellowship. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA program and lives in Amherst.
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