The Office of Historical Corrections is a short-story collection by American writer Danielle Evans. Published by Riverhead Books on November 10, 2020, the collection consists of six short stories and a novella (after which the collection is named) that deal with topics of race, loss, legacy, and loneliness in America. It was nominated for The Story Prize and the Chautauqua Prize, and received the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. [1]
The book's stories center apologies, corrections, and "making things right", per the author Danielle Evans. [2]
2020. The Office of Historical Corrections, Danielle Evans, Riverhead Books, hardcover, ISBN 978-1-59448-733-0.
The collection was widely praised for Evans's deft handling of the themes of the work. [3] The New York Times praised the collection as weaving together "Melvillian mundanity with melodramatic suspense". [4] In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews praised the collection as a whole, calling the stories "[n]ecessary narratives, brilliantly crafted". [5] Ian MacAllen of the Chicago Review of Books applauded the writing as "tightly structured, compact and efficient, driven by wry wit and Evans’s keen observations." [6] Chaya Bhuvaneswar, reviewing The Office of Historical Collections in The Washington Post , said that "this book will make readers face the news with renewed emotion, emotion all the more potent for the devastation that history has wrought on Evans’s characters, and on all of us." [7]
Two stories were previously included in The Best American Short Stories anthologies.
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