A definitive collection ofnew and selected stories bya master of the form

Comparisons might be drawn to writersranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami to Margaret Atwood and J. D. Salinger. All of Lethems stories are enlivened byhis wit and provocative wordplay. Chicago Tribune

This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, The Red Sun School of Thoughts, never published before, follows a teenage boy coming to terms with figures of authority and powerthose in both his biological family and in the family he creates for himself.

Elsewhere we meet Super Goat Man, a down-at-heels bohemian superhero; The Porn Critic, whose accidental expertise wrecks his own romantic aspirations; and Sleepy People, who pose interpersonal conundrums without ever rousing from their slumber. Fluidly moving between realism and the surreal, the absurd and the mundane, A Different Kind of Tension is a container bursting with life and death, couples in trouble, talking animals, and technologies on the fritz. Through it all are people longing to be seen and to connect; to thrive, love, and be forgiven. This is the joy of reading Jonathan Lethem: you never know what youre going to get. (Financial Times)