Instructions for the Drowning

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023

“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient ... As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”
—National Post

The unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow Boxer

A man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.