Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “A comedy,” he says. For what else is there?

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a bit of an undertaking and although I’m glad to be standing back on solid land I do appreciate the journey. I had some help

  I would like to thank Cathy Ciepela for suggesting, over the rim of a martini glass, that I check out what Chekhov had to say about Przhevalsky. Without her, I wouldn’t have known about Chekhov’s interest in explorers. At the time, I thought I was done with the book and sort of wanted to kill her, but now that it’s finished, thanks! “On Sakhalin” would not look the way it does without the input of Katia Kapovich, who gave it a Russian read (a truly terrifying experience for me) and changed all the names of the minor characters—and a few other things—nudging it toward authenticity. To my dad, Dr. Jerry Murray, who, learning that I was writing a book about exploreres, gamely produced his undergraduate thesis on Hanno, having no idea whether it would be useful or not. It was. He also checked the accents for the Greek. And thanks to Arthur Kinney for his close read of “Full Circle Thrice” and for being the sort of man who knows that Dampier would not have frequented a pub but rather an alehouse.

  And to my intrepid agent, Esmond Harmsworth, and my trusty editor, Elisabeth Schmitz, for their support and faith in my work. Also, thanks to Jessica Monahan for her comments and the copy editor, who drew the short straw on this one (how difficult could a collection of short stories be?) and, on top of everything else, fact checked the lot. And to my husband, John Hennessy, who is my first reader. And to my son, Nicholas Hennessy, who drew the image for the people on the stairs when we couldn’t secure the rights for the photograph.