Tobias Wolff

This book concentrates some of his best work in one place and reflecting the breadth of his gifts in the short form.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” es una obra maestra del suspense y la confusión adolescente que nació de una canción de Bob Dylan y de un caso de principios de los 60 que la autora leyó e

Tobias Wolff''s first two books, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Back in the World, were a powerful demonstration of how the short story can ''provoke our amazed appreciation'' (New York Times Book Review). In the years since he''s written a third collection, The Night in Question, as well as a pair of genre-defining memoirs (This Boy''s Life and In Pharaoh''s Army), the novella The Barracks Thief, and, most recently, a novel, Old School. Now he returns with fresh revelations - about biding one''s time, or experiencing first love, or burying one''s mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains for Iraq, a lawyer taking a difficult deposition, an American in Rome indulging the gypsy who''s picked his pocket. In these stories, as with his earlier, much-anthologized work, he once again proves himself, according to the Los Angeles Times, ''a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve.''

OLD SCHOOL

The author of "The Barracks Thief" and "Hunters in the Snow" recreates his boyhood experiences, relating how he and his mother travelled throughout the United States, and tracing his experiences and changes from young boy to manhood against the background of a violent and wildly optimistic America.

At one prestigious American public school, the boys like to emphasise their democratic ideals -the only acknowledged snobbery is literary snobbery. Once a term, a big name from the literary world visits and a contest takes place. The boys have to submit a piece of writing and the winner receives a private audience with the visitor. But then it is announced that Hemingway, the boys'' hero, is coming to the school. The competition intensifies, and the morals the school and the boys pride themselves on - honour, loyalty and friendship - are crumbling under the strain. Only time will tell who will win and what it will cost them.