Boundless Deep, and Other Stories - (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) by Gen del Raye (Paperback)

About the Book

By turns introspective, surreal, and bitingly funny, this collection of linked short stories spans seven decades across Japan and the United States and shows a family's tenacity in the face of relationships fractured by language and distance.

Book Synopsis

Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story
​Named a Public Picks 2023 by Public Books

Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Boundless Deep, and Other Stories is a portrait of a family that holds together despite everything. By turns introspective, surreal, and bitingly funny, this collection of linked short stories spans seven decades across Japan and the United States and shows the tenacity of relationships fractured by language and distance.

At the funeral of her old boss, a grandmother confronts the legacy of the draft letters she delivered as a girl during World War II. Facing the loss of his job, a father becomes the caricature strangers have always believed him to be. A graduate student living far from home is worn down by the reality of what it takes to save even a small piece of the world. Along the way, we meet communist revolutionary Shigenobu Fusako hiding out in a Tokyo hotel, submariner and war criminal Nishina Sekio in his tortured dreams, and Edwin, a half-dolphin friend, wreaking havoc in a public pool. Written in the compressed style of Amy Hempel and Lucia Berlin, these stories examine characters whose struggles submerge them, weighing them down from every angle, until they can finally float free.

Review Quotes

"Del Raye's thoughtful collection explores loss, relationships, racial tensions, and war, and its aftermath, in surreal, tender, and often humorous ways that will keep readers captivated until the end."--Booklist, starred review-- (9/22/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Gen Del Raye's Boundless Deep, and Other Stories is a moving, shape-shifting collection that examines life at the margins of belonging. Haunted by war, ghosts, sea creatures, and existence itself, Del Raye's characters are straddling worlds, wedging themselves into whatever space they can fit. With the emotional precision and imagery of a poet, and the nimble ear of a translator, Del Raye's prose is charming, surprising, and abundant in empathy."--Cecily Wong, author of Diamond Head and Kaleidoscope

About the Author

Gen Del Raye is a translator, fiction writer, and poet and was trained as an oceanographer. He was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan, and lives in Minneapolis. His writing has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, Best Small Fictions 2017, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. He is the winner of the Force Majeure Flash Contest, Up North Poetry Prize, and Great Midwest Poetry Contest and was awarded a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship.