“Alexie at his most inventive and heart-rending.” —Carolyn Alessio, Chicago Tribune

“Lyrical, rebellious, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking . . . Alexie is one of the best American writers of any color today.” —Ron Franscell, The Denver Post

“Alexie reveals himself to be a more fearless writer than one might ever have imagined; the stories are bold, uncensored, raucous, and sexy.” —Ken Foster, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“Stunning . . . Alexie’s prose contains the reverberations and human noise of the best Raymond Carver stories. . . . Although Alexie’s stories may taste like grief, they read like heaven.” —Mark Luce, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A funny, irreverent, sardonic but sentimental, rebellious postmodern voice set beside his elder . . . contemporaries. . . . Alexie is the bad boy among them, mocking, self-mocking, unpredictable, unassimilable, reminding us of the young Philip Roth.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

“What is an Indian? It’s too much for one person, even Sherman Alexie, to answer that question—it’s too much for one book. But we can look to Alexie and his prodigious imagination to give us the jokers, the geniuses, the Seattleites and reservation dwellers—all the Indians he so able creates in The Toughest Indian in the World.” —The Seattle Times

“The America of Alexie, which he has people so well in his novels, poetry and stories, is full of Indians and white people and all the admixtures that our Cherokee-Chinese-Choctaw-Seminole-Semitic-Irish-Russian hyphenated coun-try can stand. . . . The genius of Alexie’s writing is his ability to wrap language and image around the root of this anger and pain, by recognizing it as the human need for love. . . . Optimism, in fact, is Alexie’s strong suit, the American beauty that seduces all his heroes.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A collection of nine short stories in which the Indians, not the cowboys, usually get the last laugh. . . . Angry, funny, and true.” —USA Today

“Stunning . . . [Alexie] definitely writes some of the toughest prose around . . . muscular, unencumbered language that can deliver a shock like a good, hard punch . . . consistently surprising us with stories that are neither sentimental nor angry but far more emotionally complex.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“An eloquent stylist, often heightening reality as he ennobles language . . . A widely honored writer possessed of grand material.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Powerful and vivid, darkly humorous and magically surreal.” —New York Daily News

“One of the finest practitioners of the English language . . . Alexie ventures into new territory with this book [of] emotionally resonant stories.” —Tin House

“Alexie provides his usual combination of provocative politics, dark humor, rich characters, and sharp dialogue. And he manages all this while engaging in a fascinating investigation of what love means to a people in search of itself. . . . The great strength of Alexie’s writing is that, while incredibly sharp and inventive, it never calls attention to itself.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“His prose is haunting . . . he’s the real deal: a master stylist, a born storyteller, as well as a writer of inspired formal innovations and experiments. Alexie . . . is here to stay.” —Seattle Weekly

“Very fine . . . Lyrical, touching, funny, and soulful, the tales here are love stories of a mostly unconventional kind. . . . One could ask nothing more of any fiction.” —The Baltimore Sun

“Compelling . . . Alexie’s characters are complex and his eye is sharp. . . . Transforming [and] darkly comic . . . Alexie . . . [delivers] bracing observations about identity, about insiders and outsiders—in tribes, in marriages, in death—and how the two groups wittingly and unwittingly keep trading places.” —The Boston Globe

“A complex and layered volume with the resonance and depth of a crazy-quilt novel . . . Fiercely compassionate and compellingly human, The Toughest Indian in the World is Alexie at his finest.” —The New York Post

“Alexie’s prose is littered with . . . startling metaphors—communicated through spare, accessible, and often darkly humorous language. . . . For each of Alexie’s characters, toughness seems to be a mixture of circumstance, tenacity, humor, and resignation. . . . . You may find yourself simultaneously laughing out loud and cringing while reading the collection.” —Shannon Gibney, Minnesota Spokesman-Reporter

“Funny, bittersweet, touching, and angry . . . [stories] about love and pride and shame.” —Nashville Tennessean

“This new collection’s strengths, which are many, include peculiar deadpan wit and sharp lyricism, as well as a fresh, often challenging perspective on American culture. . . . Exquisite.” —Austin Chronicle

“In each of these stories Alexie directs a sure eye and an examined heart toward the problem of not knowing one’s place in the world . . . as good a writer as they come.” —Houston Chronicle

“Alexie writes, primarily, about accepting change in its various guises. In these stories, characters from varied backgrounds investigate their Indian and non-Indian identities in the context of family, intercultural conflict, love, death, car wrecks, Hollywood cowboys, and basketball.” —Maureen Salzer, North Dakota Quarterly

“Thrilling lines and voices that stick in your head long after you’ve set down the book . . . Alexie plays constantly with the reader’s expectations, his rebellious spirit showing through his characters’ actions. . . . He describes the world with which we’re familiar and then twists that world until we laugh or shudder.” —Crosswinds Weekly (New Mexico)

“The best of [these stories] deal with issues pertaining to the contemporary male in late-capitalist society. Most are written with a post-land claims sensibility in mind. . . . You will recognize shades of Raymond Carver in the opening story, “Assimilation,” or of Kurt Vonnegut in 'South by Southwest'.” —The National Post (Toronto)

“Sherman Alexie defined expectations from his very first breath. Now he does it for the American literary world and, increasingly, the American public as well.” —Book Magazine

“One of modern literature’s most talented and committed newcomers . . . His is the kind of writing that reveals human layers in a remarkable and realistic way, instantaneously exposing facets both deeply sad and uproariously funny. . . . The Toughest Indian in the World is so deftly human in tone that you’d be hard-pressed to find fault with his targets.” —Westword (Colorado)

“A lyric voice shot through with dark humor and magic . . . What Alexie is writing here are love stories—between husbands and wives, betweens sons and fathers, between men—and he writes with passion and jagged poetic sensibility.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“Good enough to stand along the best stories by contemporary masters of the form, including Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver . . . In addition to high energy, compassion, and a blinding sense of humor, what Alexie brings not only to contemporary Native American literature but also to contemporary American literature in general is a stunning ability to reverse stereotypes. . . . As his new book reminds us, Alexie’s independence, inventiveness, and creative gifts are, indeed, prodigious.” —Bloomsbury Review