Fever

Two joggers are seduced into a young woman's erotic fantasy; an English professor deconstructs his life; a blind basketball player becomes a polestar to a lost soul abandoned by his lover; an elderly Jew tries to make contact with the old black woman who has cleaned for him for half a lifetime; strikingly varied, by turns subtle and intense, razor-sharp, disturbing, and elusive, the stories in this collection are connected by themes of memory and loss, by the interplay of reality and fabrication, and by a richness of language that dances upon its carefully crafted foundation. Together they demonstrate beyond doubt that John Edgar Wideman is a masterly writer at the height of his considerable powers.