Following a harrowing job interview in a steam room, a nameless narrator leaves his youthful dreams behind. He finds himself at a party talking to a woman he doesn’t know, who proves to be his wife. Soon separated from her but still living in the same apartment, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction in a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries. His relationship deepens with an elderly Dutch model maker named Pecheur, whose miniature boats are erratically offered for sale in a hard-to-find shop called The Floating World. Enlivened by Pecheur’s dream to tame the destructive forces of nature, the narrator begins to find his bearings.

With quiet humor, A Floating Life charts the course of a middle-age crisis through images that surprise and disorient, leading to a “climax [that] resolves all satisfyingly and surprisingly” (Booklist). A Floating Life is a rollicking, unforgettable, and inventive journey—and it is also a source of insight, solace, and inspiration that will delight lovers of Kafka, Murakami, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Tad Crawford's stories and articles have appeared in venues such as Art in America, the Café Irreal, Confrontation, Communication Arts, Family Circle, Glamour, Guernica, the Nation, and Writer’s Digest. He is the author of many nonfiction books, chiefly on the business lives of artists and writers, and has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award. The founder and publisher of Allworth Press, he lives in New York City.