The master of short fiction returns with his first new collection since winning the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award "She believed it was a gift to never truly know the self. We are not who we think we are, nor how others see us. Long before death, we die a thousand times at the hands of a definition." After the acclaimed novels The Illusion of Separateness and Everything Beautiful Began After-which gained him a sizable new audience-the singularly talented Simon Van Booy brings his tender and emotionally incisive eye to his first new collection of stories since winning the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award: Tales of Accidental Genius. Spanning generations and continents, Simon's newest collection is a meditation on improbable relationships, and what it means to need others. An old man finds himself coming to the aid of a man on the street who had aggravated him not long before; a husband feverishly working on his next film requires his wife's guidance to see his vision realized; a fashion designer draws inspiration from an unlikely companion. In these stories, where the unexpected collide with the everyday, this master storyteller's vision reawakens us to the human experience in its ever-elusive mystery.