How I Got My Scar: Tales Told in Borrowed Voices

How I Got My Scar

by David E. McAdams

What if the same moment, one cut across the cheek, were told by Dickens, Hemingway, Morrison, or Kafka?

In this inventive and illuminating collection, David E. McAdams brings together a chorus of literary voices, each story a tribute to a different master of English prose. Though the plots vary, every tale turns on a single shared event: the protagonist receives a scar on their cheek. Yet no two scars feel the same. Tone, style, structure, and worldview transform a simple injury into something mythic, comic, tragic, or surreal.

Perfect for lovers of literature and students of the written word, How I Got My Scar offers a rare opportunity to explore authorial voice, narrative structure, and stylistic devices across genres and centuries. Ideal for classroom use in English literature and creative writing, the book doubles as both fiction and pedagogy, an accessible, engaging introduction to comparative literary study.

Whether you’re learning to write, teaching others, or simply delighting in the dance of language, this book will sharpen your eye, your ear, and your sense of story.

A scar may mark the flesh, but it is voice that marks the tale.