The Visible World (30 page)

But I would wish it for her now—an endless forest, and twenty years till dawn.

M
ARK
S
LOUKA
is the child of Czech immigrants himself, and draws on his personal experience and the inevitable intrusions of the past on the present. He is the author of the novel
God’s Fool,
named a Best Book of the Year by the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the short story collection
Lost Lake,
a
New York Times
Notable Book in 1998, and the nonfiction work
War of the Worlds.
Three of his essays have been selected for inclusion in
The Best American Essays,
and his short story “The Woodcarvers Tale” won the National Magazine Award for fiction. He is a contributing editor at
Harper’s Magazine,
and is currently the director for the writing program at the University of Chicago.