Living on the Edge: Fiction by Peace Corps Writers - Softcover

Coyne, John

3.6

30 ratings by Goodreads

9781880684573: Living on the Edge: Fiction by Peace Corps Writers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1880684578 ISBN 13: 9781880684573

Publisher: Curbstone Books, 1999

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Living on the Edge contains seventeen remarkable stories by writers who served in the Peace Corps, including well-known authors such as John Coyne, John Givens, Norman Rush and Paul Theroux, as well as work by exciting emerging authors like Mark Jacobs and Marnie Mueller. All these stories reflect the impact the Peace Corps experience had on former volunteers who write across cultures in the literary tradition of Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, and Paul Bowles. Each author has included a commentary on how he or she came to write the anthologized story.

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About the Author:

John Coyne was with the first group of Volunteers to Ethiopia and taught English in Addis Ababa. Later he was an Associate Peace Corps Director in Ethiopia and the Regional Manager of the New York Peace Corps Office. He has published eight novels and edited, among other books, Going Up Country: Travel Essays by Peace Corps Writers. In 1989 he founded RPCV Writers & Readers, a newsletter for and about Peace Corps volunteers.

From Publishers Weekly:

Seventeen authorsAsome celebratedAwho served in the Peace Corps at various times over the last three decades offer, in these unusual, enlightening tales, a startling look into the mostly Third World locales they grew to know. The authors' backgrounds and subject matter varies widely, though the themes most often converge in the clash between Western and native cultural ways. Paul Theroux, who served in Malawi in 1963, starts off the collection with the magnificently taut "White Lies," about a horrific parasitic rash set upon a philandering foreigner by his scorned African lover. Technical writer Leslie Simmonds Ekstom's (Nigeria, 1963-65) "On Sunday There Might Be Americans" is a powerfully imagined narrative about an aboriginal boy's scrounging for subsistence in the shadow of rich white interlopers. Marnie Mueller (Ecuador, 1963-65), an NBA winner for her novel Green Fires, explores in her story "Exile" the possibility of cross-cultural romance between an exiled Argentine writer and an American political activist living in Mexico City. Each short fiction is introduced by the author's explanation, "How I Came to Write This Story," often based on true experience or impression, followed by a brief biography. While these details are interesting, at times they may dilute the enjoyment of the stories as vivid creations in their own right. Other authors represented include editor Coyne (Ethiopia, 1962-64), who founded a newsletter for and about Peace Corps writers, and novelist Norman Rush (Botswana, 1978-1993).
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