Await Your Reply (30 page)

D
AN
C
HAON
is the acclaimed author of
You Remind Me of Me
, which was named one of the best books of the year by
The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor
, and
Entertainment Weekly
, among other publications. Ballantine has also published two collections of his short stories:
Fitting Ends
and
Among the Missing
, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award.

Chaon’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Best American Short Stories of 1996 and 2003, the Pushcart Prize 2000, 2002, and 2003, and the O. Henry Prize Stories, 2001. His fiction has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction in 2002 and 2007. He was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Chaon lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College.

Await Your Reply
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2009 by Dan Chaon

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Henry Holt and Company, LLC, and The Random House Group Ltd. for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Road Not Taken” from the book
The Poetry of Robert Frost
, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, published by Jonathan Cape. Copyright © 1916, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1944 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC, and by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Rights in the United Kingdom are controlled by The Random House Group Ltd.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Chaon, Dan.
Await your reply : a novel / Dan Chaon.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51702-9
1. Identity theft—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.H277A95 2009
813′.54—dc22      2009021245

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.0