Debriefing

A collection of short fiction from the groundbreaking essayist, novelist, and political activist includes allegories and parables as she wrestles with topics that made up her private sorrows and fears. "Susan Sontag was one of our foremost public intellectuals, a world-renowned essayist, playwright, novelist, activist, and director. Her name is surpassed only by her immense and invaluable body of work. Debriefing collects all of Sontag's shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life. The book's contents range from allegory to parable to autobiography, and show her wrestling with problems not typical of the essay, her more customary mode. Here she catches fragments of life on the fly, dramatizes her private griefs and fears, lets characters take her where they will. The result is a collection of remarkable brilliance, versatility, and charm. Sontag's work has typically required time for people to catch up to it. These challenging Works of literary art--made more urgent by the passage of years-await a new generation of readers. Debriefing is an invaluable record of the creative output of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power."--Dust jacket flap.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.