Brief Encounters With the Enemy

"An unnamed American city feeling the effects of a war waged far away and suffering from bad weather is the backdrop for this startling work of fiction. The protagonists are aimless young men going from one blue collar job to the next, or in a few cases,aspiring to middle management. Their everyday struggles--with women, with the morning commute, with a series of cruel bosses--are somehow transformed into storytelling that is both universally resonant and wonderfully uncanny. That is the unsettling, funny, and ultimately heartfelt originality of Saeid Sayrafiezadeh's short fiction, to be at home in a world not quite our own but with many, many lessons to offer us"--

Said Sayrafiezadeh was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. He is the author of a memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Magazine, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. He lives in New York City and teaches at New York University.