4Las historias de este libro hiriente y sobrecogedor tienen como escenario los pueblos y las tierras del sur de Estados Unidos, un mundo decr pito y en ruinas cuyo secular abandono y pobreza ancestral aparecen marcados por la violencia y el odio.

Pero m s all de la sordidez, los conflictos raciales, el asfixiante peso de la religi n y la frustrada lucha por la libertad, hay siempre en los cuentos de Flannery O'Connor una extra a belleza, una ntima exposici n moral de la condici n humana que trasciende la an cdota.

En este volumen se re nen sus mejores relatos, tanto los que public en vida como los que dej in ditos, muchos de los cuales nunca se hab an traducido al castellano.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death?is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.