Fiction. Though best known as the author of two of the earliest Beat novels (WHO WALK IN DARKNESS and THE BOLD SABATEURS), Chandler Brossard (1922-93) displayed his exuberant imagination best in the shorter works he wroteduring the second half of his life, all of which are collected here. Ranging from a surrealistic anti-Vietnam War novella to a folksy walking tour of a Kafkaesque Amerika, these seven works form a perfect introduction to one of the most daring writers of postwar America.

Chandler Brossard was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in 1922 and grew up in Washington, DC. He left school at an early age and was largely self-educated. During the 1940s he worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, Time, and the American Mercury. He published numerous books of fiction over a forty-year period, many of which were translated into other languages. Apart from brief periods in Italy and San Francisco, he lived most of his life in New York City, where he died in 1993.