Daniel Mason’s A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth is a collection of interlaced stories that examine the ecstasy, fear, and loss that characterize our lifelong search for meaning and survival. The bestselling, award-winning author was interviewed by Daniel Engber on what connects his characters and what he hopes readers gain from the collection, especially during this period of uncertainty.
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A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth
By Daniel Mason
Published by Little, Brown and Company
On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.
At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories—among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner—cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile’s depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times magazine called the “struggle for survival…hand to hand, word to word,” by “one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction.”
