One of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. International bestseller. A
Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia
Berlin. One of The New York Times ' 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century and a classic
of short fiction Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women was a global sensation upon its
publication in 2015 eleven years after its author's death. Largely unheralded throughout her
peripatetic life Berlin was a fiction writer of staggering singular genius. With the grit of
Raymond Carver the humor of Grace Paley and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own Berlin
crafted miracles from the everyday uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway
houses of the American Southwest in the homes of the Bay Area upper class among switchboard
operators and struggling mothers hitchhikers and bad Christians. Written over the course of
thirty years the forty-three stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women -collected here in a 10th
anniversary edition-are short fiction at its most unforgettable and original told with
unmistakable style by a master of the form.
