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The Best of R. A. Lafferty

R. A. Lafferty

Tor Books

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ISBN10: 1250778530
ISBN13: 9781250778536

Trade Paperback

288 Pages

$19.99

CA$26.99

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Acclaimed as one of the most original voices in modern literature, a winner of the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was an American original, a teller of acute, indescribably loopy tall tales whose work has been compared to that of Avram Davidson, Flannery O’Connor, Flann O’Brien, and Gene Wolfe.

The Best of R.A. Lafferty presents 22 of his best flights of offbeat imagination, ranging from classics like “Nine-Hundred Grandmothers” (basis for the later novel) and “The Primary Education of the Cameroi,” to his Hugo Award-winning “Eurema’s Dam.”

Introduced by Neil Gaiman, the volume also contains story introductions and afterwords by, among many others, Michael Dirda, Samuel R. Delany, John Scalzi, Connie Willis, Jeff VanderMeer, Kelly Robson, Harlan Ellison, Michael Swanwick, Robert Silverberg, Neil Gaiman, and Patton Oswalt.

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt

Not to Mention R. A. Lafferty: A Personal Introduction

Neil Gaiman


Objectivity is a good thing. We rely on our commentators, our observers, our critics to be objective. It’s what makes a critic a good critic and a reviewer a...

About the author

R. A. Lafferty

R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002) lived almost his entire life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After service in the South Pacific during World War II, he worked as an electrical engineer. He began selling fiction regularly in the early 1960s, and went full-time as a writer in 1971. His work draws on many influences, ranging from Irish and Native American tales to the writings of St. Teresa of Avila. His novels include Past Master (1968), Fourth Mansions (1969), and the Native American historical Okla Hannali (1972).