Brief Encounters with Che Guevara

Ben Fountain is the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara and a debut novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2012 National Book Award. In addition, he has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, an O. Henry Award and two Pushcart Prizes. He was also shortlisted for the International Author of the Year Award in 2012. His fiction has been published in Harper's, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story and Stories from the South: The Year's Best, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times among other publications. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

* Exceptional ... Each of these eight stories is as rich as a novel ... Heartbreaking, absurd, deftly drawn New York Times * Fountain has the storytelling gifts to bring the world home to us and a moral compass set to true north -- Gary Shteyngart * Brave, intelligent fiction Independent on Sunday * The work of a very talented writer who is keenly engaged with analysing American identity in the wider world... Beyond the pleasures of Fountain's vivid image-making and fluent storytelling, his collection's great accomplishment is the depth of reality it gives the foreign settings -- Chris Power Guardian * It is such an unexpected joy, in this age of introspection, to discover an American writer with a global outlook -- Jim Crace, Author Of Being Dead * Fountain writes with sparkle and dark humour Daily Express * In this first collection the author brings the virtuosity of Greene and le Carre to tales of foreign adventures Boston Globe * Impeccable ... an heir to Paul Theroux Kirkus Reviews * A collection of stories dealing with moral choices, with the complexity of what being decent can mean ... It's funny. And human. There's no pretense or cleverness - it's just a beautiful book Boston Globe * Fountain prowls similar turf to that of Tom Bissell, Gary Shteyngart and even early Thomas Pynchon ... an impressive performance from an author with a gift for reaching into the past and producing something compelling and new Los Angeles Times Book Review * Ben Fountain writes the kind of stories that Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene used to write ... full of complex adventure and off-balance humour San Diego Union-Tribune * [Fountain] offers pointed prose, nimble revelation . . [and] a rueful generosity towards a string of well-intentioned bumblers Philadelphia Inquirer