How to Pronounce Knife

How to Pronounce Knife

By Souvankham Thammavongsa
Unabridged
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An impressive debut...Thammavongsa's spare, rigorous stories are preoccupied with themes of alienation and dislocation, her characters burdened by the sense of existing unseen... Her gift for the gently absurd means the stories never feel dour or predictable, even when their outcomes are by some measure bleak...It is when the characters' sense of alienation follows them home, into the private space of the family, that Thammavongsa's stories most wrench the heart.
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week

A #1 Amazon bestseller

Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize

Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Named one of the New York Times' "7 New Books to Watch Out for in April," this revelatory story collection honors characters struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary "grunt work of the world."
 
In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.
 
The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to build lives in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting.
 
In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning.

Winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize

“As the daughter of refugees, I’m able to finally see myself in stories.” —Angela So, Electric Literature