The Great Fire by Hazzard, Shirley - 2003

New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003. First Edition, First Printing. Pictorial Wraps. Near Fine. Advance Reader's Copy, Special Galley. Light shelfwear to edge extremeties and minor soiling to side of text block, apparently from handling with dirty hands. A very handsome copy, still in collectible condition. Hazzard is best known as the author of four novels and two collections of short fiction, a body of fiction as distinguished as it is small. Her first book, the story collection Cliffs of Fall, was published in 1963. In 1977 her short story "A Long Story Short", originally published in The New Yorker on 26 July 1976, received an O. Henry Award. The Transit of Venus, her third novel, won the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her next novel, The Great Fire, which took her twenty years to write, garnered the 2003 National Book Award and the 2004 Miles Franklin Award. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, and named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Economist.