When You Are Engulfed in FlamesWhen You Are Engulfed in Flames

Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In this remarkable new volume, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life--having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds--to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle times).