A Person Made of Porcelain and Other Stories By Heimito von Doderer, Translated by Vincent King

In his eminence, his iconic status, and his masterful command of enormous fictional realms in several huge novels, Heimito von Doderer (1896–1966) still enjoys legendary status close to forty years after his death. The daunting scope of his novels – his magnum opus is over 1300 pages long! – has tended to obscure his achievement as a writer of shorter fiction, even in the German-speaking world. Doderer came to esteem his brief stories and tales quite highly, and he took special pride in condensing whole plots and conflicts into one-sentence fictions. By turns playful and poignant, grotesque and idyllic, the short fiction merits a wider audience.