How We Are Hungry
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
In this "tour de force" (New York Times Book Review), the Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Circle demonstrates his mastery of the short story. "These tales reinvigorate ... the short story with a jittery sense of adventure." --San Francisco Chronicle
Including the stories: "Another"
"What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him from His Vehicle and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust"
"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water"
"On Wanting to Have Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home"
"Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance"
"She Waits, Seething, Blooming"
"Quiet"
"Your Mother and I"
"Naveed"
"Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone"
"About the Man Who Began Flying After Meeting Her"
"Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"
"After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned"
Including the stories: "Another"
"What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him from His Vehicle and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust"
"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water"
"On Wanting to Have Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home"
"Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance"
"She Waits, Seething, Blooming"
"Quiet"
"Your Mother and I"
"Naveed"
"Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone"
"About the Man Who Began Flying After Meeting Her"
"Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"
"After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned"
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1400095565
ISBN13:9781400095568
Release Date:October 2005
Publisher:Vintage
Length:224 Pages
Weight:0.56 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"
Customer Reviews
5 ratings
Gasp, Literature?!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
Dave eggers is easily one of the most approachable authors alive today. Filled with wit and humor, it is likely any infrequent reader would fall in love with him. However, underneath this vail of seducing the illiterate, is an author who crafts stories so original and beautiful and full of meaning, that I'm convinced everyone would love his work, and this book specifically. That said, "After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned" is, to me, one of the best short stories I have ever come across. It has everyhting a good story needs, and though maybe not ALL the stories in here are for everyone, surely people will find a story they love and identify so strongly with, as I have.
It's good to be hungry.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Dave Eggers is a great writer. Some like to say he's too ironic. Others like to say he's too sincere. And that's because he's both ironic and sincere, which makes him a paradox, and also makes him easy to misunderstand, willfully or not. And really, what we're talking about here is not Dave Eggers, but the man's writing. Remember that. Eggers' writing is ironic and sincere and beautiful and well-crafted, and it is challenging. Which means that it might not be what you think it is at first glance, even when you like it right away. Eggers has a great mind. And he has an expansive eye for detail, for characters and flaws and very real absurdities, and for the joys and pains of life. For that I thank him.
In the tradition of Nabokov and George Saunders
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
I loved the story I read from this collection in the Best Magazine Writing of 2003 because the sentences were Nabokovian. Who knew surfing could be described with sentences that make you want to cry? But reading this collection I see that Dave Eggers is up to more than pretty sentences. His stories are timely and, many of them, allegorical. They resemble George Saunders's work in that they, too, create a mirror that reflects our human condition and political situation more clearly than we were able to see it before.
Staggering genius.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Dave Eggers has always been too clever by half, and often that resulted in prose getting in the way of plot. Short stories, therefore, are the perfect medium for him, as he can dazzle with words without being bound to develop characters or advance a story (although the few longer stories in the book are surprisingly good). There's not a dud in the book; I'd love to see him publish another volume.
Brings new life to the short story genre
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Just when I thought I knew what to expect from the short story or from the yawn-inducing term "short story collection," Eggers's new book came along and blew me away. The stories vary in length (some are a paragraph) and location (Egypt, Costa Rica). Some have no words at all (that should keep you guessing). But each of them is full of invention and beauty, humor and concern, joy and hunger. You don't get the feeling when reading this book, as you do with other collections, that certain stories were inserted just to pad out the pages. Each one is a surprise and stands on its own as a beautiful object. And the collection raises the bar for other short story writers. My vote for the best collection of the year. Hands down.
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
