Field Study

From the title piece, in which a young biologist conceals his discoveries at a polluted river from a local woman, to the family aided by an enemy in 'The Crossing', to the old man weighing his regrets in 'Francis John Jones, 1924. This title captures the lives of author's characters in their most essential, secret moments.

A magnificent collection: striking, moving, and deeply thought-provoking

Seiffert is a writer of great delicacy and toughness...good story begetting good story after good story

It is extraordinary to experience these fictions... Not even the achievement of The Dark Room , its maturity and courage, will quite prepare the reader for the subtle art at work throughout these stories

Vivid, just and heartfelt

'The Crossing' has all the leanness of Hemingway's short fiction... In Seiffert's hands, the tale becomes a tense parable set at the dangerous intersection of trust, desperation and xenophobia

Rachel Seiffer's short stories excel at depicting the awkwardness and confusions of life...and all are created with the same confidence and skill she showed in her Booker nominated novel The Dark Room

Skillfully constructed... It's rare to meet such an unwriterly writer. Especially one who does it so well

Captivating... Because Seiffert writes without judgment or sympathy, her flawed characters are all the more compelling

Whether they are Polish emigrés or hoary World War I veteran's, Seiffert's cast walks the knife's edge of history... It takes an agile mind and dexterous prose to invoke such weighty chunks of history in short fiction

The daughter of an Australian father and a German mother, Rachel Seiffert was born in Oxford and lives in London. She is the author the Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room - which won a Betty Trask Award and the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction - and the novel Afterwards . She was named one of Granta 's 'Best of Young British' and one of 25 women writers to watch in the 'Orange Futures' promotion.