It Will Come Back to You Collected Stories

By: Sigrid Nunez

Published by Penguin Group, 2026-07-14

The first ever collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend

Over the course of thirty years, Sigrid Nunez has become one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive voices, producing nine penetrating, profound novels celebrated by fans and critics alike. Revered for their warm, unadorned style, Nunez’s books are “as sophisticated as they are straightforward” (New York Times Magazine), melding a “wry, withering wit” (NPR) with “explosions of pathos” (Washington Post) to conjure “world[s] of insight into death, grief, art, and love” (Wall Street Journal).

But she has not, until now, produced a book of stories. In It Will Come Back to You, Nunez selects thirteen of her best stories from the decades-long sweep of her career, tracing the origins of her style and her remarkable artistic range. Moving from the momentous to the mundane, Nunez maintains her expert balance between gravity and levity while probing the philosophical questions that illuminate her work.

What New York Times critic Dwight Garner says of Nunez’s novels is true of these stories as well: “They are . . . wise, provocative, funny—good and strong company.”