The Office of Historical Corrections

A dazzling dissection of our twisted attitudes about race, culture, history, and truth. * Esquire *
With the seven brilliant stories in The Office of Historical Corrections, Danielle Evans demonstrates, once again, that she is the finest short story writer working today. These stories are sly and prescient, a nuanced reflection of the world we are living in . . . wickedly smart and haunting. -- Roxane Gay
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans reminds me why I love short fiction . . . Evans is blessed with perfect pitch when it comes to dialogue – both in terms of what is spoken and what goes unsaid. -- Tayari Jones * Guardian *
Danielle Evans is a wonder . . . She writes about the stakes of contemporary life in a way that always feels so true and so right. You leave her stories feeling like you’ll miss those characters forever. She is a writer of the first order. -- Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life
Evans' prose presents something of a rarity in contemporary fiction: where sure and deft craft meet real feeling. Her stories grip and amuse, cutting to the essence of what it might mean to be Black in America. -- Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Open Water
Evans’s storytelling shines . . . her characters are sharp, with terrific depth, and her prose is a pleasure to read. * Washington Post *
Blistering stories of Black lives that set the record straight . . . One of the saving graces of the last few years is the abundance of sharp fiction that deftly dramatizes racial injustice and division in this country. Evans goes further than most. * Los Angeles Times *
What makes a good short story? Danielle Evans' dynamite new collection proves a study in the form. Slices of life, each piece in Corrections captures its own mood, hums to distinct rhythms, and locates unique spaces for empathy and pain and catharsis. They're also delectably readable, propulsive accounts of loss and fear and redemption that twist with O. Henry-level glee. * EW *
The most astonishing thing I’ve read this fall. * BuzzFeed *
The energy, humor, and intelligence, the careful examination of history and of [Evans's] characters’ internal and external states, gave me the feeling of being present at a gathering of fascinating strangers and friends, and I was saddened when the party was done. -- Jamel Brinkley, 'Our Contributors’ Favorite Books of 2020' * The Paris Review *
You don’t want to miss this captivating collection of short stories by the award-winning short story extraordinaire Danielle Evans. Tales of race, loss, history and relationships culminate in the final stunning eponymous novella. * Ms. Magazine *
Exceptionally wise . . . Every story in The Office of Historical Collections is on point. . . but the ancestral thriller novella that spawned its title is completely transformative. * Vulture *
Evans . . . dives into the generational wounds from America’s violent racial past and present, and crafts her stories with a surgeon's precision. Each detail meticulously builds on the last, leading to satisfying, unforeseeable plot twists . . . Readers won’t be able to look away from the page. * Booklist (starred review) *
One is truly never the same after reading a short story by Danielle Evans. * LitHub *
Evans . . . releases a hotly anticipated new story collection, exploring the subjects of race, American history and grief with her signature insight. * USA Today *
One of the most incisive, resonant writers working today . . . Evans brilliantly reflects and dissects contemporary crises surrounding race, identity, and America . . . It's in the titular novella, in which a Black woman living in Washington, D.C. starts investigating a historical mystery that has stakes both personal and societal, that Evans will really blow your mind, leaving you to put the pieces back together. * Refinery29 *
These scorching stories . . . take a headlong plunge into the murky waters of identity, race, and love. * O, The Oprah Magazine *
The stories here feel ripped from the headlines, but each offers an insightful glimpse into the strange world we've built beneath ourselves. * Bustle *
Evans’s story collection offers the return of a sardonic, witty and insightful cast of protagonists who have to attend bad bridesmaids functions and gaslighting from hook-ups, doctors, and others (usually men) who underestimate them based on what they look like. -- 20 books we’re excited for this fall * Boston Globe *
In these six assured short stories and one novella, women, mostly Black, undergo moments of trial and transition. Evans uses outré imaginative elements . . . but grounds her narratives in the familiar—family illnesses, fraught relationships with exes, complicated reckonings with race. * New Yorker *
The author rewrites the official record by way of fiction . . . Evans’s propulsive narratives read as though they’re getting away with something, building what feel like novelistic plots onto the short story’s modest real estate. No surprise, then, that this collection concludes with its title novella, about a Black professor who quits her job to work for the city government, correcting factual mistakes in the public record. The story marries Melvillian mundanity with melodramatic suspense. I could have kept reading for pages. * New York Times *
This collection of short stories touches on relationships, pain, fear and love — all under the lens of race. But it’s the eponymous novella, in which a Black scholar working for a government agency faces the job of correcting the historical record, that has reviewers proclaiming brilliance. -- All the new books you’ll want to read in November * CNN *
A dazzling collection. Contemporary life in Danielle Evans's stories has a kind of incandescent and dangerous energy: even in moments of somberness or isolation, her characters crackle with heat, light, and self-awareness. -- Kelly Link
Danielle Evans is a stone-cold genius, in possession of both a merciless eye and a merciful heart. And she keeps getting better. -- Rebecca Makkai