Literary Fiction · DarkLoosely connected vignettes told in the first person, with no named characters or places
Steps
A series of short, loosely linked scenes told by a nameless narrator
Steps is made of loosely connected vignettes, short stories, reminiscences, anecdotes and dialogues. Some pieces link to each other and others do not. The narration is in the first person, and no characters or places are named. One reading takes it as a Polish man's experience under the Soviet regime, set against his life as a new immigrant in the United States. Random House published it in 1968 and The Bodley Head in 1969.
More about this book
Who
A first-person narrator, never named.
World
No place is named. One interpretation sets a Polish man's life under the Soviet regime against his life as a new immigrant in the United States.
What makes it different
It is a series of vignettes, anecdotes and dialogues rather than a continuous plot.
Feel
Terse and unsettling. David Foster Wallace called it a "collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux." It won the 1969 National Book Award for Fiction.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- StepsWikipedia