The Petty Theft of Fiction – V. S. Pritchett and the Moderate Short Story
Literature, Politics and the CIA: Polish-English Literary Translation at the Time of the Cold War

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the most important formal and thematic characteristics of V. S. Pritchett’s short stories, and attempts to provide an analytical paradigm for what seems to be an original form of social realist short fiction. By analysing themes (crime, above all others), characterisation, eventfulness, and rhetorical closures of selected stories, the author of this article draws attention to the importance of stasis and recalcitrance in the texts, and aims toaddress the problem of the relative neglect V. S. Pritchett’s short fiction has suffered from in the critical debates of the last few decades.

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