The Book of Disbelieving

Electric Literature’s Must-Read Debut Short Story Collections of 2023

Winner of the 2022 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Susan Minot

Set amid unique and fabulous worlds, the stories of The Book of Disbelieving trace a cast of characters wrestling with questions of faith—in god, nature, memory, or reality. A village built atop a great fish; a tower that houses an entire civilization; a town that ritually engages in literal leaps of faith; a diary that blurs the line between imagination and memory. Steeped in the existential crises of our era, The Book of Disbelieving is a modern book of fables and lore. Behold this book with wonder.

"[I]insidiously intriguing. . . Morse reveals a[n] . . . ability to interrogate the mundane and find its surprising secrets. [These] [p]rovocative tales [are] bound to raise questions about the reader's own assumptions."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Even in stories set in what appears to be our own world, speculative elements thrum through the pages: a recently widowed janitor finds a highly detailed account of his day to day work life, written by his late wife; a woman receives a watch from her dying father, which stops at 3:27 AM each day. The Book of Disbelieving is a collection that travels to strange and magical worlds, yet returns again and again to societal anxieties that echo our own."
—Electric Literature, "The Must-Read Short Story Collections of 2023"

"Throughout The Book of Disbelieving, Morse remains an assured storyteller. The language sings. The plots are layered. The characters come alive."
—Southern Review of Books

“The Book of Disbelieving is filled with beauteous, beguiling wonders—giants of the deep, towers that stretch to infinity—but the most affecting magic here is profoundly human: the unknowability of others (and of ourselves); the mysteries of love and loss. Morse conjures the fantastic with such gorgeous, vivid precision we yearn for it to be real, much as his characters yearn to believe in each other.”
—Peter Ho Davies, author of the Man Booker Prize-longlisted book The Welsh Girl

“The stories in David Lawrence Morse's The Book of Disbelieving are located somewhere between what used to be called ‘the real world’ and the world of fables, mirror-realities, and dreams. This book carefully and patiently takes you into Wonderland, where nothing is quite what it seems. Reader, be prepared for a mind-bending journey to places you have never been before.”
—Charles Baxter, author of The Sun Collective

"With its light touch, The Book of Disbelieving skillfully tracks how a change in worldview—subtle or bold—recreates the ways we look at society and one another. There’s wild imagination here in the service of investigating relationships of all kinds—and each story reverberates beautifully into the next."
—Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master