This brilliant collection of tales has marked John Biguenet out as one of the rising stars of American literature. Powerful, moving and elegant, they cover every aspect of the human condition from tales of the family to those of the macabre...

In 'The Open Curtain', a man achieves intimacy with his family only when he recognizes - watching them dine as he sits in his car at the curb - that he lives in a household of strangers. Menaced by a gang of skinheads in a Jewish cemetery, an American tourist in Germany placates the Neo-Nazis with a formula he continues to repeat even after he is safely back home in 'I Am Not a Jew'. And as for love, it makes demands in such stories as 'Do Me' that shake our very notions of what it means to love.

If these stories engage the world in sometimes shocking ways, they are eloquent in their prose, surprising in their plotting, sly in their humour. Such mastery of craft is impressive, and whether it seeks to amuse or move, each story in THE TORTURER'S APPRENTICE has the power and style to affect the reader to the very core...