> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407091969
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Field Study




'Contains vast themes of war and kinship, grief and terror, love and trust. This is the short story at its best' - Sunday Times

Rachel Seiffert, author of The Dark Room, powerfully evokes our need for human connection in this brilliant and haunting group of stories. From the title piece, in which a young biologist conceals his discoveries at a polluted river from a local woman, to the family aided by an enemy in 'The Crossing', to the old man weighing his regrets in 'Francis John Jones, 1924 -' Seiffert's acclaimed, refined prose movingly captures the lives of her characters in their most essential, secret moments.

A Rocky Mountain News Best Book of the Year.

  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407091969
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Rachel Seiffert

The daughter of an Australian father and a German mother, Rachel Seiffert was born in Oxford and later moved to London. Her novel The Dark Room was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She has also written an acclaimed collection of short stories, Field Study.

Also by Rachel Seiffert

See all

Praise for Field Study

A magnificent collection: striking, moving, and deeply thought-provoking

Financial Times

Captivating... Because Seiffert writes without judgment or sympathy, her flawed characters are all the more compelling

Entertainment Weekly

It is extraordinary to experience these fictions... Not even the achievement of The Dark Room, its maturity and courage, will quite prepare the reader for the subtle art at work throughout these stories

Irish Times

Rachel Seiffer's short stories excel at depicting the awkwardness and confusions of life...and all are created with the same confidence and skill she showed in her Booker nominated novel The Dark Room

Sian Stott, Daily Telegraph

Seiffert is a writer of great delicacy and toughness...good story begetting good story after good story

Guardian

Skillfully constructed... It's rare to meet such an unwriterly writer. Especially one who does it so well

Observer

'The Crossing' has all the leanness of Hemingway's short fiction... In Seiffert's hands, the tale becomes a tense parable set at the dangerous intersection of trust, desperation and xenophobia

New York Times Book Review

Vivid, just and heartfelt

Daily Telegraph

Whether they are Polish emigrés or hoary World War I veteran's, Seiffert's cast walks the knife's edge of history... It takes an agile mind and dexterous prose to invoke such weighty chunks of history in short fiction

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel