Ethan Canin, a former physician, was on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop when he wrote the four long stories in this national bestseller in 1994. The last story, The Palace Thief, became the movie The Emperor’s Club, starring Kevin Kline.

All four long stories (or novellas) are excellent – very well structured and with interesting characters who, at crucial times in their lives, struggle to understand the changes their lives have taken because of their responses at the crucial times. The first story, Accountant, was originally published in Esquire magazine in May 1993. The second story, Batorsag and Szerelem, was originally published in Granta magazine in July 1993. The third story is City of Broken Hearts. The Palace Thief was originally published in the Fall 1993 Issue of The Paris Review. I thoroughly enjoyed each of the four stories, each one very different but so compelling that one has to read it in a single sitting, which I did for each. But I only discuss one of these stories here.

My favorite story is the titular story – The Palace Thief – in part because I had also been a college professor (but of physics at a large university, not a classical professor at an elite prep school as is the classics teacher in this story) and perhaps also because I had very much enjoyed the movie version. In the movie I had great empathy for the teacher (Kevin Kline) and little sympathy for the other lead character, a troubled student whose father, a powerful senator, told his son he must get good grades – a great challenge for a character who was neither studious nor brilliant. But the student was allowed by the teacher to compete in a well-known and well-attended traditional classics contest. At a reunion of his students 41 years later, there is a repeat of this contest. This repeat led the classics professor to question himself about whether he had been as great a teacher as he thought he had been. Ethan Canin needs only 50 pages to tell all one needs to know about the moral characters of the teacher and the student in this especially powerful and dramatic story. I recommend this long-story collection very highly.