Black Swans

"Babitz’s talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never interferes with her feel for languid pleasures." — The New York Times Book Review

A new reissue of Babitz’s collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s—decades of dreams, drink, and glimpses of a changing world. Black Swans further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation.

"On the page, Babitz is pure pleasure—a perpetual-motion machine of no-stakes elation and champagne fizz." — The New Yorker

"[A] true original." — The Boston Globe

"She’s a natural. Or gives every appearance of being one, her writing elevated yet slangy, bright, bouncy, cheerfully hedonistic—L.A. in it purest, most idealized form." — Vanity Fair

"Babitz's writing is also like the jacaranda tree in glorious bloom—bewitching an entire city, but all too brief." — Los Angeles Review of Books