Lasdun, James

James Lasdun, an author, poet, and professor, offers his own words on the ordeal he went through with a former student who styled herself a "verbal terrorist." This student claimed to love him, but that love turned to hate apparently and she made it her goal to, in her words, "ruin him" through hate mail and public accusations of sexual misconduct and plagiarism.

The stories in this remarkable collection--including "An Anxious Man," winner of the National Short Story Prize (UK)--are vibrant and gripping. James Lasdun's great gift is his unfailing psychological instinct for the vertiginous moments when the essence of a life discloses itself. With forensic skill he exposes his characters' hidden desires and fears, drawing back the folds of their familiar self-delusions, their images of themselves, their habits and routines, to reveal their interior lives with brilliant clarity.