National Bestseller

A masterful literary talent explores the treacherous, often violent borders between war and sex, love and art.

With the flash of a camera, one girl's life is shattered, and a host of others altered forever...

In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image wins acclaim and prizes, becoming an icon for millions -- and a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer's best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own.

As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends, including a fearless bisexual poet and an ingenuous performance artist, to save her by rescuing the unknown girl and bringing her to the United States. And yet, as their plot unfolds, everything we know about the story comes into question: What does the writer really want? Who is controlling the action? And what will happen when these two worlds -- east and west, real and virtual -- collide?

A fierce, provocative, and deeply affecting novel of both ideas and action that blends the tight construction of Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending with the emotional power of Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Lidia Yuknavitch's The Small Backs of Children is a major step forward from one of our most avidly watched writers.

• We started tracking this book on April 27, 2015.
• This book was $12.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 108 times in the past 3,710 days.
• The current price of this book is $0.99 last checked 13 hours ago.
• The lowest price to date was $0.99 last reached on June 22, 2025.
• This book has been $0.99 4 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on October 30, 2015.
• This book has been $14.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionLiterary FictionLGBTQ+ Literary Fiction
• Literature & FictionHistorical FictionHistorical
• Literature & FictionHistorical FictionUnited States

• Publication Date: July 7, 2015
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 239 Pages
• File Size: 930 KB