An Arrangement of Light — Nicole Krauss

Hailed by "The New York Times" as "one of America's most important novelists," international bestselling author Nicole Krauss ("The History of Love," "Great House") is among the most ambitious and distinctive writers of our time. Her chilling new short story, "An Arrangement of Light," is irrefutable evidence of Krauss's gifts. Narrated by the personal secretary to a world-famous landscape architect, it's a tale about how survival of the fittest, whether for flora or fauna, beast or man, is often a guarantee of treachery, and how, in the end, our loyalties can become as trapping as any prison. Set in an unnamed country as familiar as it is otherworldly, the story begins with a young horticulturist's admiration for the work of a great man and his hope to help build a new public park in the capital. He ends up securing far more than that: a complicity with the park's celebrated designer he could never have imagined or indeed wished for. And when a military coup ushers capricious generals into power and they arrive in their black sedans with dark plans for the new park, the personal secretary discovers that dreams risk running headlong into nightmares. Ultimately he must reckon with the fact that nature, for all its beauty, is cruel and conniving, and that a good gardener cannot tame it, only bend its neck. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestsellers "Great House," which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and "The History of Love." Her first novel, "Man Walks into a Room," was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. She was selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007 and by "The New Yorker" for its "Twenty Under Forty" list in 2010. Her fiction has been published in "The New Yorker," "Harper's," "Esquire," and "Best American Short Stories," and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. PRAISE FOR NICOLE KRAUSS "Krauss is a prodigious talent. … Krauss's work is ill