For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

Fifth Printing [35,000 initial print run]. 8vo. Pp. [xii], 205, [7]. Dark brown paper backstrip over violet paper-covered boards, lettered in silver to spine; deckled fore edge. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde.

Signed by the author on the title page, rather than the unspecified number of copies which were bound with the tipped-in signed page.

The author's debut collection of short stories steeped in the weight and customs of Jewish history, which won the Pushcart Prize as well as the PEN/Malamud Award in 2000. Recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Selected by The New Yorker as one of "Twenty Writers for the 21st Century".

In the collection's hilarious title story, a Hasidic man gets a special dispensation from his rabbi to see a prostitute. It was originally published by F&W Publications, Cincinnati, OH, 1996, while the author was still a student at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. "[T]he best story collection I've read in ages." –Ann Beattie