Praise for People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much

“I can’t remember the last time I read a debut collection with such excitement. This is a thrilling book: hilarious, surreal, humane, startlingly wise. A brilliant new voice, exhilaratingly original.”

—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

“Stambo’s wondrous, unpredictable and extraordinarily perceptive humor lights up these pages and occasionally even sets them on fire. A superb investigation into the contrary, bemusing, feral and fearsome facets of our shared human character.”

—Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

“What a beautifully unnerving, supremely accomplished and altogether exhilarating collection. Stambo slays.”

—Junot Díaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her

“Sofi Stambo’s People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much is stunning. It is at once delicately constructed—a subtle blend of wit and lapidarian prose—and breathtakingly profound, an examination of the immigrant experience, of people doubly, triply, displaced but always somehow resilient. Yana Mihaylova’s beautiful drawings augment the stories’ depth and central mysteries. This is one of the most exquisite books I’ve read in a long time.”

—Hasanthika Sirisena, author of Dark Tourist

“Stambo takes the reader to the cusp of everything—heartbreak, hilarity, loss, rediscovery, and a deep sense of longing for that thing we call home. I completely fell for her half-real, half-surreal characters, who are also animals, reminding us that our mammalian past is filled with frolic and hope even in the dark. I’m smitten.”

—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan

“Stambo’s prose is effervescent and her humor razor sharp, but it’s her empathy that won my heart. From Bulgarian beaches to city diners, these slice-of-life stories follow characters both heady with hope and noble in defeat, shaping a collection that’s ultimately an ode to the strange wonder of being alive.”

—Priyanka Champaneri, author of The City of Good Death

“Stambo is an incredible writer—sly and intelligent, compassionate and sharp—who brilliantly straddles the line between comedy and despair sentence by sentence, story by story. This is a stunning and important new book by a writer with talent in spades.”

—Molly Antopol, author of The Unamericans

“In our dark age in which outsiders are easily—and lazily—satanized, Stambo offers an essential antidote: humanization. There is an ecumenical quality to her perspective. Her characters, no matter where they come from, are quirky, complex, emblematic, and, more than anything else, unique.”

—Ilan Stavans, publisher of Restless Books and author of Sabor Judio: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook

“Sofi Stambo's gorgeous and insightful collection People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much is a journey through the hilarious and heartbreaking humanities that connect us. This brilliant debut cracks open the epic in our everyday.” 

—Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book: An Investigation