The thirteen interconnected stories of Shakespeare’s Kitchen capture the universal longing for friendship, how we achieve new intimacies for ourselves, and how slowly, inexplicably, we lose them. Featuring seven short stories that originally appeared in The New Yorker, including the O. Henry Prize–winning “The Reverse Bug,” and including six additional pieces, Lore Segal’s stunning collection “exhibits a rare insight into the human character” (Publishers Weekly).

Called “an enchanting storyteller” by The Los Angeles Times, Segal unravels a web of human relationships as we meet Ilka Weisz, who, having accepted a teaching position at the Concordance Institute, a Connecticut think tank, reluctantly leaves her New York circle of friends. After the comedy of her struggle to meet new people, Ilka comes to embrace, and be embraced by, a new set of acquaintances, including the institute’s director, Leslie Shakespeare, and his wife, Eliza.

Through a series of memorable dinner parties, picnics, Sunday brunches, and long hours of kitchen conversation, Segal evokes the subtle drama and humor of an outsider’s loneliness, the comfort and charm of familiar companionship, the bliss of being in love, and the strangeness of our behavior in the face of other people’s deaths.