"Glittering. . . . filled with humor, canny allusion, beauty."—The New Yorker
"Quite possibly America's best living writer of short stories."—NPR
"Williams is a writer for our times: both visionary and caustic, knowing yet also full of wonder."—Catherine Taylor, The Financial Times
Over the course of these ninety-nine illuminations, a collection of connected and disparate beings—ranging from ordinary folk to grand, known figures such as Jung, Nietzsche, Pythagoras, Bach, and Rilke; to mountains, oceans, dogs, birds, whales, horses, butterflies, a sixty-year-old tortoise, and a chimp named Washoe—experience the varying fate of the soul as each encounters the darkness of transcendence in this era of extinction. A brilliant crash course in philosophy, religion, literature, and culture, Concerning the Future of Souls is an absolution and an indictment, sorrowful and ecstatic. Williams will leave you wonderstruck, pondering the morality of being mortal.
