The winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Steven Millhauser is an American author. Born in the 'Big Apple' in 1943, Millhauser has published a number of works of fiction over the course of his career, both in novel and short story format.
In 'The Knife Thrower and Other Stories', Millhauser blends the worlds of the normal and the bizarre, introducing the reader to a quasi-carnivalesque state of affairs in each short story. Originally published separately in publications such as Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker and The Paris Review, the collection was published in its current form in 1998 and is made up of 12 short stories, including the title story 'The Knife Thrower', 'The Way Out', 'Paradise Park' and 'Kaspar Hauser Speaks'.
Evoking dark, eerie and strange yet curiously recognizable and relatable worlds and settings, the collection invites us to, in the tradition of Mikhail Bulgakov, Angela Carter, and other such writers, suspend our disbelief and enter into these worlds accompanied by an eclectic mix of characters.