Selected by Barry Hannah as the 1996 winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.

This small volume of 4 short stories, the whole of which can be read in one sitting, takes the reader on what the author hopes will prove a fascinating journey. In the first story, from which the book takes its name, The Interrogation of Ephraim Sparkman, we travel, by the magic of words, through time and space to Mars in the distant future. In The Buddha's Smile we find ourselves in a small Kalmyk village seized by the German SS deep inside the Soviet Union during World War 11. Next, comes The Blame Game. It's 1975 and we are standing with the accused in the dock at the Old Bailey criminal court in London charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The last story, The Rabbi, follows the destiny of a young man from Berlin in 1938 to the battle of Stalingrad in 1943.