A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth
“An enchanting cabinet of curiosities and wonders…Mason is one of our best historical novelists, creating panoramas of rich detail, propulsive plot, and artful character development…In his first story collection, he shows how quickly and completely he can immerse readers in a foreign place and time…Nine tales of human endurance, accomplishment, and epiphany told with style and brio.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist: This collection of moving short stories is “a treasure trove of lush scene setting in faraway times and places” (Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle).
On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.
At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories—among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner—cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the "struggle for survival … hand to hand, word to word," by "one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction."
A Library Journal Best Book of 2020
Praise