Pricksongs and Descants

First published in 1969, "Pricksongs & Descants" is a celebrated collection of short fictions that helped establish Robert Coover as one of the most innovative American writers of the postwar period.

Mixing metafiction, black comedy, and formal experimentation, the book includes such widely anthologized pieces as "The Babysitter" and the "Seven Exemplary Fictions", in which Coover fractures and rewrites familiar narratives—from fairy tales like "The Gingerbread House" to biblical and mythic stories—exploring how stories themselves shape reality.

Critics have praised the collection as a cornerstone of Coover’s career and a landmark of postmodern American fiction, distinguished by its audacious narrative strategies, sensual and musical language, and playful yet unsettling treatment of sex, violence, and domestic life.